An amazing story and an absorbing read for racing buffs, but those interested in the psychology of this singular athlete...
Seabiscuit meets Reds.
Jimmy Winkfield’s life was so rich in incident, set against such a vivid tapestry of world-shaking events, that his failure to emerge from his own story as a compelling character seems like a cruel irony. New York Times writer Drape (The Race for the Triple Crown, 2001) has marshaled impressive research and a clear passion for the history of horse racing to tell the remarkable story of Winkfield, who, born one of 17 children to poor black sharecroppers in 1882, went on to win the Kentucky Derby in two consecutive years, become the toast of Moscow (where he was dubbed “The Black Maestro”), fled the Russian Revolution and later, in Paris, the Nazis. The events of Winkfield’s incredible history never fail to captivate—his participation in a drive to save the finest horses of Moscow from the advancing Red Army screams for the Hollywood treatment—but the man himself remains distant, distinguished only by his ambition and uncanny, almost telepathic ability to read horses. Winkfield paid dearly for his single-minded focus, repeatedly sacrificing his family for his zeal to win races; on the other hand, perhaps this tunnel vision accounts for the man’s ability to persist in the face of racism and devastating reversals. Drape compensates for the essential opaqueness of his protagonist with authoritative accounts of the establishment of fabled racetracks such as Belmont and the Louisville Jockey Club, descriptions of Winkfield’s colorful European patrons and a nuanced analysis of the social and cultural realities that the peripatetic jockey faced in America, Russia, Austria and France. But ultimately, Winkfield’s story fails to satisfy the requirements of a hero’s journey; in Drape’s narrative, he seems, despite his great talent, to be a man without qualities, someone to whom things happen, a Zelig on horseback.
An amazing story and an absorbing read for racing buffs, but those interested in the psychology of this singular athlete will be disappointed.Pub Date: April 25, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-053729-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 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
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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