Although he can go on too much about how unaffected and genuine he is, Garner comes across as likable on the page as he does...
With Winokur (The Big Book of Irony, 2007, etc.) Garner tells his life story with the same wry, self-effacing charm that characterized his classic TV characters: the laidback cowboy Bret Maverick and the down-on-his-heels gumshoe Jim Rockford.
Raised in Depression-era Oklahoma by an alcoholic father and abusive stepmother, Garner escaped to Hollywood, got his own hit show (Maverick) before he was 30 and made movies. He has stayed married to the same woman for over 50 years. Fate has, for the most part, been kind: “The only reason I’m an actor is that a lady pulled out of a parking space in front of a producer’s office.” Along the way, he also spent a hellish season in the Korean War and received two Purple Hearts in Korea—though he claims that he “didn’t save anybody but myself.” Garner praises mentors such as Henry Fonda and Marlon Brando and offers testier assessments of his late neighbor and competitor Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson (“a bitter, belligerent SOB”) and Charlton Heston (“stiff as a board”). He gives great inside dope on the technical demands of making of his racing hit Grand Prix (1966), the sheer physical toll action roles can take on the body and the equally brutal business end of Hollywood, where Garner has survived two legendary you’ll-never-work-in-this-town-again run-ins with the studios (“It was like being in business with the Mafia, only Universal didn’t need a gun, just a pencil”). The author is also full of contradictions. He doesn’t believe in glorifying the military but supports a memorial for Korean War veterans, calls himself a coward but continually points out that he never backs down from a fight and claims not to take acting too seriously (“I have to laugh when I hear actors talking about their art”) but clearly knows the craft and respects it.
Although he can go on too much about how unaffected and genuine he is, Garner comes across as likable on the page as he does on screen.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4516-4260-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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