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WHISTLER

A LIFE

Large hats, monocle, cane, raucous laugh; eccentric, volatile, clever enough to be plagiarized by Oscar Wilde, arrogant enough to challenge John Ruskin's qualifications as an art critic: Whistler (1834-1903) was the stuff of tabloids. Fleming (English/Louisiana State; Murderers' Row, 1985, etc.) represents his life that way: gossip, repartee, names, cliques, quarrels, involvements—the portrait of an artist without an inner life. Born in America, raised in St. Petersburg, educated at West Point, Whistler's vivid life style and generosity earned him the title ``King of Bohemia'' while he studied in the conservative ateliers of Paris. Seeking more artistic independence, he moved to London, where he exhibited his paintings and drew critical scorn and parodies for their affectation and peculiar subject-matter. He lived with a series of lower-class women, fathered several illegitimate children, only one of whom he provided for (Fleming: ``the portraits and nocturnes may be worth a few neglected children''). Mostly, he was known for his temper, on which he often acted, punching a black man because of his color, knocking his brother-in-law through a plate-glass window in Paris—according to Fleming, using his fists as others used drink and drugs, as a release of tension. In his later years, he quarreled in print, sued anyone who disagreed with him, and courted publicity of any sort. Fleming says that he has no thesis, merely wanting to create an ``accurate portrait''—which may account for the lack of analysis, interpretation, and context, his separating the life from the works and the works from the artistic, economic, political, and social environment in which Whistler functioned. But given Whistler's curious behavior, and, as a painter, the many clues he gave to understanding it, there seems little excuse for not dealing with his psychology. Whistler himself claimed that a portrait is a solution to a problem; this one remains unresolved.

Pub Date: July 22, 1991

ISBN: 0-312-05995-7

Page Count: 416

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1991

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NIGHT

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

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

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