A raw, uncut journey into the wilds of Venezuela.
Travel writer Maslin (Iranian Rappers and Persian Porn: A Hitchhiker's Adventures in the New Iran, 2009) offers a firsthand account of the many debacles endured throughout his Venezuelan trek. Yet what makes his story unique is the manner in which he chooses to experience the country—by couch surfing, a get-what-you-pay-for approach to traveling in which hosts open their homes to strangers. The result is a comic tale in which Maslin soon finds himself accosted by corrupt cops and abandoned by unruly cab drivers, as well as serving as pincushion to an overzealous nurse and her needle. While the author blends his problematic personal narrative alongside Venezuela's historical backdrop, and current turbulent politics under the leadership of loose cannon Hugo Chávez the personal tale wins out. His experiences on the ground depict a poverty-stricken nation with a predatory populace looking to exploit naïve travelers. However, Maslin provides another view as well, in which the beauty-obsessed citizens somehow find the funds to frequent plastic surgeons with the regularity most people reserve for dentists. Venezuela's body-complex epidemic comes into even sharper focus as the author draws connections between plastic surgery and the country's love for beauty pageants—a cultural undercurrent that transforms young girls to grown women with the flick of a scalpel. Maslin soon moves beyond the Venezuelan people's proclivities, devoting equal time to the country's natural beauty, including a journey into the dense jungles to glimpse Angel Falls, the world’s tallest waterfall. This juxtaposition between people and place—as well as beauties both natural and otherwise—offers a rare commentary on a country most readers know little about. A complex portrait of Venezuela's people, poverty and promise.
Pub Date: June 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-61608-221-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
What we've all been awaiting: the first of Hemingway's posthumous works he began in 1958 and finished in 1960. This is a memoir of his expatriate days in the twenties, and MacLeish's little poem about the young man with the panther good looks who whittled a style for his times in the sawmill attic in Paris comes to life here. What also comes to light is the "inside story," or the very personal revelations, parts of whicy may become a cause scandale. Not only is the Fitzgerald portrait ungenerous, but the disclosures of his sexual difficulties with Zelda are embarrassing. Miss Stein is also victimized, and there are allusions to puzzling perversities. Pound, Ford, Eliot, Lewis and Joyce are around and they are treated with affection, or affectionate malice. The best passages are the descriptive ones— fine writing with all the supple surety of Sun— of bookstalls, cafes, streets, the Seine, race tracks, and travel. And of course there's Hemingway on his wife Hadley, and Hemingway on Hemingway..... Mary McCarthy's famous attack on Salinger scored him for following Papa's special club of OK people (like him) versus the "others" (unlike him). The memoir has something of that snobbery and certain people may go after it accordingly. Still, whatever the indiscretions, it is an important work, a literary source from a master. There can be little doubt of its interest and attraction for many as a reprise of a now legendary time when Hemingway was young and happy and "invulnerable," and a place— well, "There is never any ending to Paris.
Pub Date: May 5, 1964
ISBN: 0684833638
Page Count: 207
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1964
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Entertaining as pulp fiction, real as a federal indictment.
A cocky bad boy of finance recalls, in much detail and scabrous language, his nasty career as a master of his own universe.
At a young age, in an industry with many precocious bandits, Belfort ran a Long Island–based brokerage with the deceptively WASP-y name of Stratton Oakmont. It was a bucket shop habitually engaged in crooked underwritings. Its persuasive boss was a stock manipulator and tax dodger; he details the stock kiting, share parking, money laundering and customer swindles. Many millions poured in, and cash brought with it excess upon excess. Along with compliant women and copious drugs, there were multiple mansions, many servants, aircraft, yachts and, for all the guys on the trading floor, trophy wives. Among his under-the-table and beneath-the-sheets activities, the author’s most imperative seemed to be sex and dope-taking, despite his professed abiding love for his (now ex) wife and kids. Belfort’s portrait of his family is vivid, as is his depiction of the merry cast of supporting players: sweet Aunt Patricia, a Swiss forger, evil garmentos, Mad Max (Stratton’s CFO and his father). The melodrama covers coke snorting, Quaalude eating, kinky sex, violence, car wrecks, even a sick child and a storm at sea. “A cautionary tale,” the author calls it. It is crass, certainly, and vulgar—and a hell of a read. Belfort displays dirty writing skills many basis points above his tricky ilk. His chronicle ends with his arrest for fraud. Now, with 22 months in the slammer behind him, he’s working on his next book.
Entertaining as pulp fiction, real as a federal indictment.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-553-80546-8
Page Count: 522
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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