Over ten years in the making, Talese's latest was well worth the wait, and will certainly redeem his embarrassingly participatory foray into the sexual revolution in Thy Neighbor's Wife (1980). Incorporating fictional technique, Talese's massive genealogical tale has all the sweep and detail of a grand 19th- century novel. Talese here asks the simple question: How did his father, Joseph, a tailor trained in his small village in southern Italy, end up plying his trade in an equally remote town on the New Jersey shore? The answer is anything but simple and demands a look into the historical background of the great migrations of our century. Relying on family letters, diaries, and interviews, Talese views Italian history from the bottom up, charting the effect of major events on ordinary people. From occupation by Bourbon Kings and Napoleon to Garibaldi and the unification of the country, from intervention in WW I to the rise of Mussolini and Fascism—the south of Italy has always maintained its unique character, an odd combination of anarchic individualism and communal piety. The Talese family mostly hails from Maida, a small village not far from the tip of the Italian boot. And there, Talese's ancestors dwelt for centuries until the social breakdown of the modern world penetrated the region. While great-grandfather Domenico continued as the familial patriarch, he could no longer demand that his son remain in Italy. Gaetano, after whom the author is named, joined the search for remunerative labor in the New World, and found himself working construction in the bizarrely feudal town of Ambler, Pennsylvania. His wife became one of the ``white widows,'' those women who stayed behind with the children while their men worked overseas. From an early age, father-to-be Joseph filled his own head with dreams of emigration. His story is neatly juxtaposed with that of his cousin, Antonio, who fled the confining world of Maida for success as a tailor in Paris. But Joseph ventured further, eventually setting up shop among the stern Protestants of Ocean City, New Jersey, where his son grew up deracinated but always curious about his otherness. This stunning combination of history and autobiography is the perfect antidote to the operatic romanticism of The Godfather. It's a major contribution to the literature of diaspora. (Book-of-the- Month Main Selection for March)
Pub Date: Feb. 18, 1992
ISBN: 0-679-41034-1
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1991
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
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