A sympathetic, evenhanded biography of a man notorious for his savage wit.
Biography of the acerbic, irreverent comedian who inspired a new generation of performers.
When Mort Sahl (b. 1927) debuted on stage in 1953 in San Francisco, he wanted his pithy social and political jibes to change comedy. In an entertaining, abundantly—sometimes overwhelmingly—detailed biography, Curtis (William Cameron Menzies: The Shape of Films to Come, 2015, etc.), biographer of Spencer Tracy, Preston Sturges, and W.C. Fields, makes a strong case for Sahl’s influence. For Woody Allen, Sahl opened up “a whole new style of humor” that led him to become a performer rather than just a writer. Dick Cavett called Sahl’s performances “stunning.” Among early admirers were Jack Benny, Groucho Marx, and Milton Berle. Skewering presidents, platitudes, and hypocrisy, Sahl got his material from daily newspapers, which he often carried onstage. “Wherever there is political bloat,” Hubert Humphrey remarked, “Mort sticks a pin in it.” He set out to shock and discomfit. “Are there any groups we haven’t offended yet?” Sahl often asked his audiences. Curtis had Sahl’s cooperation and also interviewed colleagues, one ex-wife, and assorted friends. While celebrating Sahl’s career, he is forthright about his subject’s many shortcomings. Foremost among them was a tendency to bitterness, anger, and paranoia. He was certain, for example, of an “industry-wide conspiracy” to keep him off TV even though his appearances were not always successes. He was convinced, as well, that John F. Kennedy’s assassination was the result of a conspiracy and, to the point of obsession, embraced the theories advanced by Mark Lane and Jim Garrison. “In time,” Curtis asserts, “the conspiracy Sahl blamed for keeping him unemployed got conflated with the one he saw as being responsible for the death of the president.” The author follows Sahl’s life chronologically, accounting for every nightclub, movie, TV, radio, and stage appearance; the women he dated, married, and broke up with; the colleagues he befriended or alienated; and the demons that beset him.
A sympathetic, evenhanded biography of a man notorious for his savage wit.Pub Date: May 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4968-0928-5
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
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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