The man now considered America's greatest movie star is chronicled seriously and fully, but not always movingly or with new critical insight. Unsurprisingly for a work by a veteran literary biographer (Robert Frost, 1996, etc.), Bogart radiates an erudition uncommon to film bios. It skillfully interweaves quotes from disparate sources (Umberto Eco, Michael Curtiz, and Groucho Marx within six paragraphs), and makes a logical link between Bogart and his tough-guy contemporary Ernest Hemingway; the book's opening pages are devoted to detailing the parallels between the two men. Meyers's respectful approach fits his subject, whom he presents as intellectually restless, morally upright, politically aware, and courageous in facing the esophageal cancer that killed him. As befits the genre, there are plenty of anecdotes, though some, like the Bogart-Bacall meeting on To Have and Have Not and George Raft's rejection of the lead role in The Maltese Falcon, are familiar. Meyers's look at Bogart's relationship with John Huston provides insight into how both worked, and the stormy marriage to Mayo Methot is played out in nice detail. Bacall comes off a bit tarnished here: She loved Bogart but was extravagant, infatuated with Adlai Stevenson, and had an affair with Sinatra at the end of Bogart's life. Most amusing are the author's throwaway lines (``Huston had always wanted to direct a movie from horseback. . . .'') and his list of Bogart's films, which are divided into four categories: Best, Important, Good, and Poor. In addition, there is ample film analysis (``Casablanca transcends its absurdities''), but little revelatory to readers familiar with the usual critical suspects. Still, the book succeeds at conveying Bogart's enduring strength as a star, a figure who, 40 years after his death, remains culturally and aesthetically alive. A refreshingly serious film biography that movie lovers will appreciate for approaching Bogart as a subject, not a celebrity. (49 b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: April 18, 1997
ISBN: 0-395-77399-7
Page Count: 367
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1997
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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