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AARON COPLAND

Name: AARON COPLAND
Author: Howard Pollack
ISBN: 0-8050-4909-6

THE LIFE AND WORK OF AN UNCOMMON MAN

by Howard Pollack ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 9, 1999

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A music historian’s (Univ. of Houston) biography of the man who, despite sectarian assaults from the academy, is still regarded as America’s greatest composer. Modern biographers appear to feel obliged to write works that weigh in at several pounds; but, length notwithstanding, Pollack’s book is remarkably taut and clear. Extensive musical analyses, though with minimal technical jargon, replace the meal inventories and party rosters that usually document life’s less dramatic stretches and, given the breadth and diversity of Copland’s (1900—90) work, prove both welcome and diverting. But more original is the narrative design. Rather than simply stringing together what he considers telling episodes, Pollack sounds a theme as it occurs chronologically—political affiliations, professional relationships, personal finances—and then offers a summary of its development and variation across a lifetime. The effect is of parallel expositions that create a superstructure only gradually filled in. New events enter into existing contexts, seeming to assume their prescribed places rather than accreting randomly. Pollack sketches character in the same way, presenting a series of sometimes conflicting accounts from friends and rivals, all meticulously footnoted, and then allowing the reader to judge new disclosures of fact accordingly. He appears to have no psychoanalytic theory about Copland—a leftist Brooklyn Jew who came to grips with his homosexuality in the 1920s—which is a welcome relief. Perhaps his even-handedness and circumspection derive from his subject, a paragon of self-control in an environment uniquely hospitable to self-indulgence. Still, such creditable objectivity, even in describing the aesthetic rigor that, combined with Copland’s compulsive honesty, could disgruntle colleagues, can—t help but stir affection for the man who did more than any other to build a uniquely American musical culture. Not only a success in its own right, but a valuable model of what biography can and probably should be.

Pub Date: March 9, 1999

ISBN: 0-8050-4909-6

Page Count: 632

Publisher: Henry Holt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS & CELEBRITY

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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)