Thoughtful, earnest reflections on family, creative integrity, and a life in music.
The frontman of Wilco on vulnerability, creativity, and taking the long cut.
Tweedy (Adult Head, 2004) would like to avoid the usual trappings of the rock memoir: stories of sexual exploits, drug use, and endless road tours. Of course, these elements are present in his memoir, just not in the manner one might expect. The author, lead singer of the American rock band Wilco and founding member of alt-country group Uncle Tupelo, actively demythologizes the rock-’n’-roll hero. Instead of painting a self-indulgent portrait of bravado, unflagging charisma, and innate musical talent, Tweedy relates tales of social awkwardness and panic attacks overcome by hard work and an encyclopedic knowledge of rock history. The author lays claim to vulnerability as his defining artistic trait, a characteristic that fuels an intense openness to emotions, musical influences, and artistic relationships. Fans will appreciate early sections recounting the search for obscure albums and the necessity of playing dilapidated venues. Tweedy also details productive yet embattled relationships with the two Jays, fellow band mates Jay Farrar and Jay Bennett. Some of the most powerful sections cover Tweedy’s lapse into, and recovery from, opioid addiction. Jettisoning the hackneyed image of the womanizing rock star, the author also recounts an anguished story about a sexual encounter with an older woman when he was 14. Taken as a whole, the memoir provides lessons in making art from a person who needed to create in order to combat loneliness and despair. At times, the writing meanders, though this could equally be described as the book’s changing tempo, as it alternates between plot-driven sections and more ruminative pieces. The introduction, moreover, is discordantly jokey. Sincerity is what bolsters this book. Tweedy writes movingly about his parents, his wife and children, and his desire to find an artistic home for his band.
Thoughtful, earnest reflections on family, creative integrity, and a life in music.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-101-98526-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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.
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
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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