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TOO MARVELOUS FOR WORDS

THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF ART TATUM

By amateur historian/jazzman Lester, the first bio of legendary jazz pianist Tatum. Lester is the first to admit that he's in over his head in attempting this book, an ominous foreboding of the quality of the work to come. Still, his labor-of-love is based on some original scholarship, including interviews with the remaining musicians who knew the legend at firsthand (although Tatum's second wife and surviving relatives refused to be interviewed, as did important figures like jazz promoter Norman Granz). Tatum developed a highly idiosyncratic style of playing based on impressionistic harmonies, dazzling arpeggios and runs (that some find overly fussy), and polyrhythms and polyharmonies, forging a uniquely personal technique few could copy. His incredible capacity for alcohol, almost photographic memory for melodies and song structures, competitiveness when faced with challenges by other pianists, and essentially gentle nature are all well-documented, but in the end, even so, Lester fails to give us a well-rounded life story. Tatum was an intensely private man and few knew him well; even the facts of his life are up for grabs. He may or may not have been born visually impaired: his loss of vision may have been due to childhood disease, a run-in with a neighborhood tough, or cataracts. He was married twice, having at least one child (and perhaps two others). The extent of his musical education is unknown. Lester spends most of his narrative in a fog, unable to sort fiction from fact. His analysis of Tatum's genius runs to truism (``[His] remarkable memory was still remarkable''), and he suffers from an inferiority complex toward classical performers: comparing Tatum with keyboard legends like Vladimir Horowitz, he asserts that Tatum was really a ``piano stylist,'' not a jazz musician, thus continuing the myth that jazz is a poor stepchild to ``serious,'' classical music. Well-intentioned but frustrating.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1994

ISBN: 0-19-508365-2

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Oxford Univ.

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1993

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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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