A sometimes-amusing but uneven collection.
A debut book of humorous, autobiographical essays from a self-described “doctor of comedy.”
In this book, stand-up comic and occasional actor Chamberlain covers everything from his ongoing battle with his weight to his childhood memories of the 1954 giant-ant movie Them!, which he says terrified him. Chamberlain’s tales call to mind those of Jean Shepherd of A Christmas Story fame, and there are some funny lines here. For instance, he likens locating a parking spot in San Francisco to “finding a Super Bowl ticket in a box of Cracker Jack.” Indeed, the book tries to elicit a chuckle with almost every sentence—a pace that makes it feel more like a stand-up routine than a collection of essays. The book faces a big obstacle, though, in the fact that it’s in a hugely popular genre—one that’s been tackled by many better-known comedians. However, Chamberlain does have one advantage over such big names: his stories about life on the fringes of showbiz, which are his most effective chapters. Just reading the names of some of the lesser-known comedy clubs that once flourished around the country is amusing: “The Chuckle Hut,” “Ha Ha’s,” “Giggles.” So are his comments about working the murder mystery dinner theater circuit, and his tale of auditioning for a small role as a mental patient in the 1998 Robin Williams vehicle Patch Adams. More of these types of tales and fewer about other aspects of the author’s everyday life—such as an account of his father adjusting a TV antenna on the roof—would have worked to the book’s advantage. Also, there are inaccuracies in a few essays; the author says that The Curse of the Werewolf (1961) starred Lon Chaney when it actually starred Oliver Reed, and he renders Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly’s name as “Bill O’Rielly.”
A sometimes-amusing but uneven collection.Pub Date: April 29, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9895734-4-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Quinn-Hill
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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