A smart memoir, wrapped inside an overly didactic advice book.
Herbert's (Creating the AHRC, 2008) latest book—half epistolary memoir, half advice guide— tells young adults why they should be serious about their work.
“I had often professed that a liberal education was good preparation for life,” the author writes in the book’s opening letter. “My worklife ended up testing that traditional guidance.” He then puts his education to good use, penning a total of 25 letters to “Jonah,” a stand-in for all young people who are gearing up to enter the adult workplace. The letters touch on issues of philosophy, history and psychology, while also recounting anecdotes about Herbert’s life as a working stiff and his struggle to make a difference in an indifferent world. The autobiographical fragments manage to be both sobering in their depiction of cold bureaucratic work and inspirational in their optimism in the face of adversity. Herbert notes that he takes his inspiration from Swiss film director Alain Tanner’s 1976 classic, Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000, about youth in the aftermath of the social upheavals of the late ’60s. He quotes a line from the film: “In twenty-five years the century will spit him out….That’s the time left for us to help him get off the shit-pile.” The author takes the same admirable stance—that older generations have an obligation to make the world better for younger ones. However, the book does become repetitive, reminding readers again and again about how harsh and heedless the adult world can be. This isn’t particularly surprising or insightful advice, especially considering that the world of the young can also be harsh and heedless, and some readers may feel it to be condescending. Overall, the book might have benefited from a less heavy-handed approach. But when the gloom and doom are wiped away, one finds a remarkably beautiful book underneath. Perhaps if Herbert had concentrated his efforts into a narrative form, he could have achieved his noble goals more effectively.
A smart memoir, wrapped inside an overly didactic advice book.Pub Date: May 8, 2014
ISBN: 978-0615948560
Page Count: 190
Publisher: Agora Associates of Metropolitan Washington
Review Posted Online: Sept. 5, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Naughty good fun from an impossibly sardonic rogue, quickly rising to Twainian stature.
The undisputed champion of the self-conscious and the self-deprecating returns with yet more autobiographical gems from his apparently inexhaustible cache (Naked, 1997, etc.).
Sedaris at first mines what may be the most idiosyncratic, if innocuous, childhood since the McCourt clan. Here is father Lou, who’s propositioned, via phone, by married family friend Mrs. Midland (“Oh, Lou. It just feels so good to . . . talk to someone who really . . . understands”). Only years later is it divulged that “Mrs. Midland” was impersonated by Lou’s 12-year-old daughter Amy. (Lou, to the prankster’s relief, always politely declined Mrs. Midland’s overtures.) Meanwhile, Mrs. Sedaris—soon after she’s put a beloved sick cat to sleep—is terrorized by bogus reports of a “miraculous new cure for feline leukemia,” all orchestrated by her bitter children. Brilliant evildoing in this family is not unique to the author. Sedaris (also an essayist on National Public Radio) approaches comic preeminence as he details his futile attempts, as an adult, to learn the French language. Having moved to Paris, he enrolls in French class and struggles endlessly with the logic in assigning inanimate objects a gender (“Why refer to Lady Flesh Wound or Good Sir Dishrag when these things could never live up to all that their sex implied?”). After months of this, Sedaris finds that the first French-spoken sentiment he’s fully understood has been directed to him by his sadistic teacher: “Every day spent with you is like having a cesarean section.” Among these misadventures, Sedaris catalogs his many bugaboos: the cigarette ban in New York restaurants (“I’m always searching the menu in hope that some courageous young chef has finally recognized tobacco as a vegetable”); the appending of company Web addresses to television commercials (“Who really wants to know more about Procter & Gamble?”); and a scatological dilemma that would likely remain taboo in most households.
Naughty good fun from an impossibly sardonic rogue, quickly rising to Twainian stature.Pub Date: June 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-316-77772-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
PERSPECTIVES
The memoir of George Dawson, who learned to read when he was 98, places his life in the context of the entire 20th century in this inspiring, yet ultimately blighted, biography. Dawson begins his story with an emotional bang: his account of witnessing the lynching of a young African-American man falsely accused of rape. America’s racial caste system and his illiteracy emerge as the two biggest obstacles in Dawson’s life, but a full view of the man overcoming the obstacles remains oddly hidden. Travels to Ohio, Canada, and Mexico reveal little beyond Dawson’s restlessness, since nothing much happens to him during these wanderings. Similarly, the diverse activities he finds himself engaging in—bootlegging in St. Louis, breaking horses, attending cockfights—never really advance the reader’s understanding of the man. He calls himself a “ladies’ man” and hints at a score of exciting stories, but then describes only his decorous marriage. Despite the personal nature of this memoir, Dawson remains a strangely aloof figure, never quite inviting the reader to enter his world. In contrast to Dawson’s diffidence, however, Glaubman’s overbearing presence, as he repeatedly parades himself out to converse with Dawson, stifles any momentum the memoir might develop. Almost every chapter begins with Glaubman presenting Dawson with a newspaper clipping or historical fact and asking him to comment on it, despite the fact that Dawson often does not remember or never knew about the event in question. Exasperated readers may wonder whether Dawson’s life and his accomplishments, his passion for learning despite daunting obstacles, is the tale at hand, or whether the real issue is his recollections of Archduke Ferdinand. Dawson’s achievements are impressive and potentially exalting, but the gee-whiz nature of the tale degrades it to the status of yet another bowl of chicken soup for the soul, with a narrative frame as clunky as an old bone.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-50396-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1999
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