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CONFESSIONS OF A SECULAR JEW

Name: CONFESSIONS OF A SECULAR JEW
Author: Eugene Goodheart
ISBN: 1-58567-146-0

A MEMOIR

by Eugene Goodheart ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 29, 2001

Goodheart writes with disarming gentleness throughout, but his memoir is a forlorn reminder that the Great Books do not...

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A literary critic reflects on his career in the elite circles of the academy, his tenuous connection to Jewish identity, and the vicissitudes of age.

Although Goodheart (Humanities/Brandeis) has little that is strikingly unique to say about his childhood (in a politically progressive family during the 1930s and ’40s) or his initiation into the intellectual scene of the 1950s, his account treats the usual themes—the gradual erosion of his identification with Judaism, as well as the drama of the “golden age” of Columbia University—with humor and some sensitivity. His memoir is most successful, in fact, as an account of a vanished academic world, in which bright young men could step almost effortlessly into more or less prestigious sinecures, and students, campus staff, and wives seemed to exist only to serve the scholars in their pursuit of their calling. He depicts the imperiousness of the prominent Formalist critics and the ironies of his own “conversion” from his family’s socialist idealism to the decidedly apolitical critical approaches then in vogue with some sensitivity. At the same time, casual references to relocating his (unnamed) wife as he climbed the career ladder from job to job are disconcerting, hinting at but never exploring the human cost of the professorial privilege that he enjoyed. A similar mix of self-consciousness and evasion pervades his discussion of a critic’s political obligations. “My mind swung between the poles of ‘on the one hand’ and ‘on the other,’ ” Goodheart confides, but the effect is less existential doubt than waffling. The philosophical ruminations that follow, pondering “the perils of no convictions” have the texture of a magazine article stretched to chapter length, offering broad generalizations about “people on the left,” conservatives, and postmodernists—but little analysis of specific positions or arguments. The last two chapters mourn the indignities of his own late middle age and his mother’s old age: physical deterioration, alienation, and loneliness.

Goodheart writes with disarming gentleness throughout, but his memoir is a forlorn reminder that the Great Books do not necessarily provide moral compasses or solace for the human condition.

Pub Date: May 29, 2001

ISBN: 1-58567-146-0

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Overlook

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2001

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)