Relentlessly honest, untamed, and often revelatory. Perhaps a second volume is in the works?
A wild ride through the coming-of-age wilderness of the famed rock bassist.
Though this volume barely touches on the career of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the band whose fans will likely constitute its most ardent readership, Flea’s spirit permeates the narrative, which is scattered, reflective, hedonistic, funny, scary, and occasionally redemptive. By the time it finishes, the author has just turned 20, and the band has just begun its launch. Even early on, he writes, “I knew it was all there [with the band]. I could see its path stretched out before me, but like Dorothy and Toto, I had no idea of what walking it could mean.” Flea was born Michael Peter Balzary in Melbourne, Australia, on Oct. 16, 1962, preceded by an older sister, to a mother and father who would split during his early childhood. His father continued to live in Australia, where his sister would return, while his mother moved with her son to the United States. In New York City, they lived with Walter, a tempestuous jazz musician who became Flea’s stepfather. Despite his erratic behavior, Walter showed the author how to “utilize the pathos of his life to create thrilling art. The anger and loneliness, the pain from feeling hurt and neglected could be fuel for the greatest gifts.” For years, Flea was an outsider, and his weirdness only intensified once the family moved from New York to Los Angeles in order to further what never quite became a musical career for Walter. As a “street kid” (“not a homeless kid, not an uneducated kid, but a street kid”) in LA, the author discovered a host of colorful characters and drugs, played trumpet and loved jazz, and read Vonnegut. Few of the chapters, which unfold in bursts of jazzy, sometimes irregular prose (and little attention to grammar), extend for more than a page or two, and some of them are just a paragraph. Flea was still a street kid when he bonded with future band mates Anthony Kiedis, Hillel Slovek, and Jack Irons.
Relentlessly honest, untamed, and often revelatory. Perhaps a second volume is in the works?Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4555-3053-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, often both at once. Everyone should read this extraordinary book.
The co-founder of The Toast and Slate advice columnist demonstrates his impressive range in this new collection.
In a delightful hybrid of a book—part memoir, part collection of personal essays, part extended riff on pop culture—Ortberg (The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror, 2018, etc.) blends genres with expert facility. The author’s many fans will instantly recognize his signature style with the title of the first chapter: “When You Were Younger and You Got Home Early and You Were the First One Home and No One Else Was Out on the Street, Did You Ever Worry That the Rapture Had Happened Without You? I Did.” Those long sentences and goofy yet sharp sense of humor thread together Ortberg’s playful takes on pop culture as he explores everything from House Hunters to Golden Girls to Lord Byron, Lacan, and Rilke. But what makes these wide-ranging essays work as a coherent collection are the author’s poignant reflections on faith and gender. Since publishing his last book, Ortberg has come out as trans, and he offers breathtaking accounts of his process of coming to terms with his faith and his evolving relationships with the women in his life. The chapter about coming out to his mother, framed as a version of the biblical story of Jacob and Esau, is just as touching as a brief miniplay entitled, “The Matriarchs of Avonlea Begrudgingly Accept Your Transition.” Throughout, Ortberg’s writing is vulnerable but confident, specific but never narrow, literal and lyrical. The author is refreshingly unafraid of his own uncertainty, but he’s always definitive where it counts: “Everyone will be reconciled through peace and pleasure who can possibly stand it. If you don’t squeeze through the door at first, just wait patiently for Heaven to grind you into a shape that fits.”
You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, often both at once. Everyone should read this extraordinary book.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982105-21-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
A gargantuan but surprisingly agile and spellbinding biography of the plain-speaking, plain-dealing Man from Missouri. As depicted by McCullough (Brave Companions, 1991, etc.), Truman, though the first President of the nuclear era, was fundamentally a throwback to 19th-century midwestern ideals of honesty. Like the young Teddy Roosevelt in the author's Mornings on Horseback (1981), the pre-Presidential Truman most impresses McCullough as a battler against overwhelming odds: the failed farmer and haberdasher; the WW I captain who kept his unit together under deadly fire; and the scorned product of the Kansas City machine who won Senate colleagues' respect by chairing an investigation into WW II defense spending and winning a ferocious primary contest. With the stage thus set, the narrative picks up whirlwind force, following Truman from his assumption of the Presidency upon FDR's death—when "the sun, the moon, and the stars" seemed ready to fall on him—through the decisions to drop the atomic bomb; confront Stalin at Potsdam; send troops to Korea (the most important decision of his Presidency, Truman felt); and fire MacArthur. The book's main event, however, is the legendary "Whistle-Stop Campaign" of 1948, when Truman puffed off the political upset of the century. Readers jaded by Vietnam and Watergate may ask: Could any President be this serene, honest, and courageous? Yet McCullough weaves his spell, convincingly limning a politician who didn't lie, steal, pay attention to pollsters or pundits, or quail in the face of diplomatic or political combat (his major fault seems to have been excessive loyalty to cronies who betrayed his trust). Truman apparently really was, as his Secretary of State Dean Acheson said, the "captain with the mighty heart." Rich in detail, enthralling, and moving: a classic Presidential biography.
Pub Date: June 19, 1992
ISBN: 0-671-45654-7
Page Count: 1120
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1992
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