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BEN SHAHN

Name: BEN SHAHN
Author: Howard Greenfeld
ISBN: 0-679-41932-2

AN ARTIST'S LIFE

by Howard Greenfeld ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 2, 1998

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Although he knew Ben Shahn, had access to his papers, and spent many hours interviewing his widow and adult children, Greenfeld’s biography remains curiously dispassionate. Maybe the biographer was only guarding his objectivity; after all, he felt a strong affinity for the artist. The two men met in the 1960s, and Greenfeld spent time with Shahn in Paris, New York, and New Jersey, Shahn’s home. Perhaps frustrated by the artist’s loss of reputation in the years following his death, Greenfeld—who has also written about Caruso and Puccini—undertook the biography as a means of foregrounding —one of the most significant figures in the history of twentieth-century art.” Certainly Shahn was one of the most controversial. He made his career at a time when visual art offered an undisputed potential for political impact, and he invariably infused his art with his pro-union, liberal ideals. As a result, his work was condemned time and again for its political content by religious leaders, politicans, and even by the trustees of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. However, Shahn was not easily intimidated; he was a brash person, and his work benefitted from his strength of character even when his relationships suffered. Rather than allow that complexity into his portrait of the artist, though, Greenfeld only glances at Shahn’s personal betrayals with evident distaste. As a result, the biography begins to pull apart: At one level, it carefully tracks Shahn’s professional progress from lithographer’s apprentice to New York painter, FSA photographer, and famous muralist. At another, it offers only a sketchy emotional trajectory of the man who abandoned his first wife and family and subsequently sabotaged numerous other people. The coexistence of Shahn’s political idealism and his emotional ruthlessness isn—t explored fully. Greenfeld’s hesitation to expose the man compromises the book and its subject. (40 b&w illustrations, not seen)

Pub Date: Nov. 2, 1998

ISBN: 0-679-41932-2

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1998

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

- BOOK REVIEW
A PROMISE FULFILLED
by Howard Greenfeld

- BOOK REVIEW
AFTER THE HOLOCAUST
by Howard Greenfeld

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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)