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A LIFE ON THE STAGE

The legendary actor’s juicy memoirs, nicely fleshed out with his granddaughter Rosenfeld’s explanatory commentary. Jacob Adler (1855—1926) was Yiddish theater’s greatest star, first in London and then in America, where his towering portrayals of Shylock and King Lear (transformed by Jacob Gordin’s adaptation into a Jewish merchant prince) won the praise of uptown gentile critics as well as the Lower East Side audiences who worshiped him. Modern-day readers may at first be disappointed that this memoir, the bulk of which was originally published in a New York Yiddish newspaper from 1916 to 1919, deals more with his apprentice years in Russia than his triumphs after fleeing its anti-Jewish laws in 1883. Most will soon be won over, however, by his warts-and-all depiction of the Yiddish theater’s birth (in the fourth quarter of the 19th century) as a decidedly low art form composed primarily of vulgar comedy and light music. Odessa-born Adler was a wild youth, the despair of his pious parents, who fit in easily among the drifters, hard-livers, and near-charlatans who pioneered Yiddish theater. His chronicle of their picaresque journeys and cutthroat competitiveness is vivid, amusing, and oh-so-Russian: on one page Adler swears undying enmity for the producer who “betrays” him; on the next, they fall into each others” arms as the tears and vodka flow freely. Factual information is in scant supply—Adler can—t even state his age consistently—but the incomparable evocation of place and atmosphere more than compensates. Translator and editor Rosenfeld provides the necessary historical background in commentaries that become longer (and more intrusive) in the memoir’s sketchier late chapters, which appeared in 1925 after Adler had suffered a stroke. Nonetheless, they too contain some wonderful material about his most famous roles, and Rosenfeld’s interpolations about the maturing of Yiddish theater into a more serious art (for which Adler was largely responsible) are lucid and informative. A wonderful treat for theater lovers—and for anyone who likes real-life intrigue and emotion rendered with Dostoevskian intensity. (50 photos)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999

ISBN: 0-679-41351-0

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1999

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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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