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MEMOIR IN TWO VOICES

Name: MEMOIR IN TWO VOICES
Author: François Mitterrand
ISBN: 1559703792

by François Mitterrand & illustrated by Elie Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1996

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A dialogue between two friends who have been prominent 20th- century figures on such topics as wide-ranging as childhood, faith, war, and literature. The contrasts between the late French president Franáois Mitterrand (The Wheat and the Chaff, 1982), who died in January of this year, and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel (All Rivers Run To the Sea, 1995, etc.) resound more emphatically than any similarities. While Mitterrand's childhood was almost idyllic, Wiesel's was haunted by fear: "Fear of anti-semitic thugs, fear of demons, fear of God." Yet it was Mitterrand—raised as a practicing Catholic- -who came to doubt the existence of a supreme being after experiencing the cruelties and injustices of WW II. Wiesel, on the other hand, accepts that certain things may be beyond human understanding. And although it is Wiesel who went through the horrors of the Holocaust, it is Mitterrand who holds the more pessimistic view of mankind ("We have still not evolved beyond the barbaric stage of evolution"). Both express horror at the recent resurgence of dangerous religious fanaticism. The fundamentalist, insists Wiesel, "denies the right of inquiry and therefore negates culture." While Mitterrand has been sympathetic to Jews and the Jewish state, he expresses considerable empathy with the Palestinian cause. A two-state solution, he insists, is the only just one. Wiesel is less than optimistic and more wary of the Palestinians. The book's last two sections involve discussions on literature and power. Wiesel leans to Kafka, where Mitterrand prefers Tolstoy. The writer generously draws from the politician his ideas about creativity and does not offer his own theories on the dynamics of leadership. Indeed, Wiesel is often playing the role of the admiring interviewer here, but the more profound and readable comments are his. Not the intimate memoir of its title, nor a place to glean insights into the personal lives of these two public figures. But private thoughts on significant public issues abound.

Pub Date: July 1, 1996

ISBN: 1559703792

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Arcade

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1996

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | POLITICAL & ROYALTY | 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)