An astutely political and compellingly chronicled life of the man the prince of Wales described as “the most extraordinary creature alive.” Sheridan, hoping to be remembered for his radical political career in Parliament, had wished to be buried in Westminster next to his Whig colleague Charles Fox; instead, the author of The School for Scandal was interred next to David Garrick, his predecessor as manager of the Drury Lane Theatre. Unlike most Sheridan biographers, who tend to concentrate on the young and witty Anglo-Irish playwright and the later rake-hell drinking companion of the prince of Wales and Lord Byron, essayist and drama critic O’Toole (The Lie of the Land: Irish Identities, 1998) draws out the true character of the radical, patriotic Irishman from the public figure that Sheridan himself so carefully manipulated. Although Sheridan rose to the highest English social circles and lived in Britain his entire adult life, his cultural origins were both Protestant and Gaelic, with a literary and comic inheritance from Swift, his father’s friend. His romantic reputation, however, was entirely his own invention, beginning with his sensational elopement with the glamorous young singer Elizabeth Linley, through the two duels he fought with a rival for her and his play The Rivals, which capitalized on the incidents. Despite his phenomenal success as a playwright and his coup in taking control of Drury Lane, Sheridan, O’Toole argues, looked to literary fame only for launching his Parliamentary career. Portraying Sheridan as the most principled yet most mercurial of the Whigs, O’Toole deftly reads into the political messages hidden in The School for Scandal, the theatricality of his famous five-and-a-half-hour oration against British imperial abuses in India, and his career-long act as an outsider on the inside, consorting alike with Irish rebels and British royalty. Byron jokingly reminded Sheridan’s first biographer that “Old Sherry” was “an Irishman and clever fellow,” qualities O’Toole never understates in this superbly sympathetic life.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-374-27931-4
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1998
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
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
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
