by Evelyn Waugh ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 25, 1977
All different kinds of people are going to be disappointed by these heavily heralded diaries—kept by England's most acerbic schoolboy, playboy, traveler, soldier, and novelist. Scandal-seekers, aroused by news of London brouhahas, will find: some disapproving prep-school comments on boy-boy liaisons (Waugh destroyed the presumably homosexual Oxford diary); in the partying Twenties, page after page of "little lesbian tarts and joyboys," unfamiliar footnoted names, flat decadence ("Olivia as usual behaved like a whore and was embraced on a bed by various people"), and an astonishing, tiresome amount of drinking; and, the one true poison plum, Randolph Churchill on a mission to enemy-occupied Yugoslavia—coughing, farting, always drunk, apparently deserving of Waugh's nowfamous line (after 1964 surgery): "it was a typical triumph of modern science to find the only part of Randolph that was not malignant and remove it." So much for scandal. Students of the English literary scene won't do much better, since Wangh rarely discusses the books he read and reviewed, and his meetings with the Famous resulted in only the briefest notation: Noel Coward—"no brains"; the Sitwells—"Sachie liked talking about sex. Osbert very shy. Edith wholly ignorant." And admirers of the novels will certainly find Waugh's raw, raw materials here (a Welsh prep school, the Bright Young People, arduous travels in Africa and South America, WW II sorties), but hardly any references to the writer's craft appear. As for the man himself—the conversion to Catholicism happens between diaries as do the shattering breakup of his first marriage and his nervous collapse. Only in the last "boiled eggs and narcotics" years, along with scorn for his children, increasing boredom, and fears for society ("How long will Liberty, Diversity, Privacy survive anywhere?"), does the super-critical voice explore inward. Anti-Semitic, racist, labeling those unfortunate enough to cross his path as "odious," "hideous," and "stupid," Waugh put his worst self and much dull detail into these remarkably shallow, though terribly stylish, jottings. Scholars may want to go digging, but those who treasure Tony Last, Guy Crouchback, et al., are advised to steer clear.
Pub Date: Oct. 25, 1977
ISBN: 0753827387
Page Count: 896
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1999
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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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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...
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.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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