An appropriately big book for an oversized artistic presence.
The meatiness of the material justifies the length of the author’s second (and concluding) volume of his biography of Frank Sinatra (1915-1998).
Just as his subject matured into a far more compelling artist than the one who had elicited squeals from bobby-soxers, the follow-up to Kaplan’s Frank: The Voice (2010) is far more substantial than that initial volume. Where the biographer subjected the early Sinatra to plenty of psychobabble—lots of mommy issues—and purple prose (particularly steamy with Ava Gardner), the story that begins with his mid-1950s resurgence sustains its own narrative momentum with the author generally staying out of the way. The allure of Gardner remains, long after their short-lived marriage, but Sinatra has grown in accomplishment (and reader interest) as a recording artist, an actor, a Nevada tycoon, a record-label mogul, and a controversial public figure. His pals at the time included future president John F. Kennedy and Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana—as well as the notorious Judith Campbell Exner, who was involved with all three—and Kaplan nimbly imagines the negotiations of power and influence, as Kennedy ultimately froze Sinatra out and Giancana threatened his life. The author explores the ambivalence of Sinatra’s relationships with Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. and his propensity toward both public boorishness and private benevolence, and he illuminates his “astonishingly intimate singing, created in the one place where Frank Sinatra was capable of creating intimacy.” Kaplan still displays pulpy flashes, in his evocation of how Sinatra and Mia Farrow “began to explore the strange new territory of each other” and “were a strange hybrid, this May-September pair, holding hands over a chasm, trying to stay together in spite of everything.” Refusing to take sides between Sinatra’s widow and his progeny, Kaplan treats the final years of Sinatra’s life in comparatively perfunctory fashion. But most of the rest provides a riveting story, strong enough to stand on its own without a lot of authorial embellishment.
An appropriately big book for an oversized artistic presence.Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53539-7
Page Count: 992
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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