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WILLIAM STYRON

A LIFE

This meticulously crafted, well-paced biography should go a long way toward burnishing Styron's reputation. Unlike most modern novelists of acknowledged weight, Styron has also enjoyed enormous popular and commercial success. Many of his eight books, such as The Confessions of Nat Turner and Sophie's Choice, have become international bestsellers. However, though in some circles—notably France—he is considered a writer of the first rank, Anglo-American critics have been less kind to Styron, believing that anyone of his range, accessibility, and Çclat is, perhaps, not meant for the ages. Not that Styron has much heeded the opinions of critics. Rather, he conceives of writing as an existential compulsion. As he wrote in the inaugural edition of the Paris Review, ``The writer . . . must go on writing, reflecting disorder, defeat, despair, should that be all he sees at the moment, but ever searching for the elusive love, joy, and hope—qualities which, as in the act of life itself, are best when they have to be struggled for. . . .'' While, as West illustrates, Styron's life has included its share of turmoil—a difficult childhood in Virginia, the heated controversy that greeted publication of The Confessions of Nat Turner, and a devastating bout with depression—on the whole he has followed Flaubert's hopeful dictum: ``Be regular and orderly in your life, like a good bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.'' And unlike all too many writers, he has contrived to spend very little time struggling financially. Early fame and a good marriage provided world enough and time for his slow, painstaking writing process. His gift for friendship- -with James Baldwin, Peter Mathiessen, George Plimpton, to name just a few—also served him well. West (English/Pennsylvania State Univ.) deftly transforms the solitary, drudging life of a writer into an absolutely compelling narrative, welding astute criticism and assiduous research into an eloquent whole. A masterful achievement. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen)

Pub Date: April 1, 1998

ISBN: 0-679-41054-6

Page Count: 512

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1998

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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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