Thought provoking and engaging in the style of Bruce Chatwin or Paul Theroux, with ample sides of Thomas Merton and Augusten...
Peripatetic ruminations on the meaning of life and finding a sense of direction accompany Lewis-Kraus across three very different countries.
Whatever one’s reasons for undertaking the Camino de Santiago—spiritual, touristic, to lose weight, or just for the opportunity to complain about the blisters—the experience is memorable. For the author, a freelance essayist, the trip began as a spontaneous diversion, a chance to temporarily leave behind the tediousness of everyday life and reconnect with a friend who similarly had too much free time. Sardonic discussions about the meaninglessness of blindly following an ancient footpath seamlessly give way to nuggets of personal insight both sacred and secular, and Lewis-Kraus was moved to follow the trek with a Hasidic pilgrimage to Ukraine and a circuit of 88 Buddhist temples in Japan. Pilgrims, beyond “look[ing] at each bus going by with the affection Robert Frost had for woodpiles,” spend much time deep in conversation about subjects as diverse as giraffes, the apostles and the “lazy geographical determinism of Northern Europeans.” However, the humor and the physical torment mask an inner journey through the realm of relationships, aspirations and the soul. Using the not-entirely-dissimilar legends and disciplines of Catholicism, Judaism and Buddhism as a spatial framework and scenic background, Lewis-Kraus explores the subtle impulses that drive people to follow certain paths. High-minded flights of intellectual fancy, however, are only so much use when the physical world, in the form of “a flatulent mixture of schwitz and acrid stewed kasha” intrudes.
Thought provoking and engaging in the style of Bruce Chatwin or Paul Theroux, with ample sides of Thomas Merton and Augusten Burroughs.Pub Date: May 10, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-59448-725-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2012
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
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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