In this confusing and self-serving study, Lipton (formerly, Art History/SUNY-Binghamton; Looking into Degas, 1986—not reviewed) claims to find in Victorine Meurent (Manet's favorite model, known as ``Olympia''): herself; a mother-figure; and a surrogate victim of the patriarchal community of artists and art historians. Most of the narrative here is about Lipton and her rages- -against her mother for abandoning and then abusing her; against the faithless father whom Lipton thinks she has spent her life trying to please; against her arrogant first husband, the parents of her current husband/lover (the relationship is unclear), a friend who visited her in Paris (where most of the book takes place), a courteous librarian who was unable to find the manuscript Lipton wanted (``Idiot!''), and a male academic who served on her dissertation committee. Lipton admires sensuous female contemporaries; speculates on their sexuality; and offers, for no apparent reason, a detailed description of a meal she ate in Paris, of several tawdry sexual encounters, and of the position she most enjoys in bed with her husband, a locksmith who decided to become a professional painter. The real problem is fitting Olympia into all of this. Having depicted herself as a Jewish intellectual attending CUNY in the 50's, a misguided academic who later decided to give up her career to become a writer, and an overanalyzed and self-preoccupied feminist, Lipton resembles Woody Allen more than Olympia. As for Olympia—the author's ``alias''—Lipton concludes that she lived as a neglected painter and lesbian and died at an advanced age in a suburb of Paris. Unable to find any records of her, Lipton fears that Olympia ``had no life''—that ``she was a nothing.'' Olympia deserves better and, fortunately, she received it in Otto Friedrich's Olympia (p. 30), which captured her dignity and stature as an icon of her age.
Pub Date: Jan. 4, 1993
ISBN: 0-684-19417-1
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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