by Elizabeth Goodman ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 7, 2009
An impressive balance of journalistic objectivity and sympathetic tribute.
Evenhanded biography of the indie-rock chanteuse.
Admirably avoiding either hagiography or hatchet job, Blender editor at large Goodman constructs her judicious nonfiction debut mainly from the input of music-industry scenesters closest to Chan Marshall during her evolution from interestingly awkward up-and-comer to the hot international commodity known as Cat Power. The author especially excels at re-creating the neo-bohemian social milieus that shaped Marshall’s life and early career—specifically her anarchic Southern Age of Aquarius childhood (raised by a mildly schizoid mother and struggling neo-hippie musician father) and her early-1990s struggles as a starving artist in not-yet-gentrified neighborhoods like Cabbagetown in Atlanta and New York City’s Lower East Side. Marshall’s rise to indie-rock scene-queen was sparked by an anti-performance ethos that seduced alt-rock power-brokers like Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and Gerard Cosloy of Matador Records. By the mid ’90s, her childlike fragility on stage and soul-baring vocals had positioned Cat Power as the most talked-about act on the NYC scene. She combined an irresistible androgyny with intensely personal songs that managed to be as confessional as they were inscrutable. Goodman dexterously tiptoes around any absolutist judgments on whether Marshall’s now-legendary onstage meltdowns were contrived publicity stunts or simply the result of a genuinely shattered psyche; we’re logically led to believe it’s a combination of both. Although the author reveals a deep-seated respect for her subject, she doesn’t let the slippery singer-songwriter off the hook. Detailing Marshall’s near-psychotic episodes, weighing her quietly manipulative nature or describing her 2006 near-suicide attempt, Goodman expresses a polite skepticism that penetrates the haze of press hype and effectively navigates through the artist’s self-mythologizing smokescreens.
An impressive balance of journalistic objectivity and sympathetic tribute.Pub Date: April 7, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-307-39636-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Three Rivers/Crown
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2009
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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