A depressing and annoying account of the troubled life of actor River Phoenix. Phoenix's parents, surnamed Bottom, were the sort of earnest but ludicrous hippies who in 1970 could give their firstborn the name ``River Bottom'' without noticing its inauspiciousness. Within a couple of years the Bottoms had joined a sinister pseudo- Christian cult, the Children of God, under whose edicts River was apparently introduced to sexual relations at age four. Renamed the Phoenixes by the cult, the family wound up in Venezuela as missionaries. By the time they dropped out, six-year-old River had become the indigent family's principal breadwinner, singing in the street for coins. Soon the Phoenixes moved to L.A. to try to capitalize on River's charisma and talent. There followed appearances in TV commercials and series, and eventually success in feature films such as Stand by Me and Running on Empty. In public, Phoenix was a clean-living vegan and environmental activist, but privately he drank, smoked, and at least sporadically used drugs. Given the childhood sexual abuse, the fact that he spent much of his adolescence in front of a camera, and his parents' conviction that he had a mission to reform the world, it's not hard to imagine the pressures and insecurities that ultimately led to Phoenix's death by multiple-drug overdose at age 23. Glatt (Rage & Roll, 1993) gives only an occasional inkling that he recognizes Phoenix's appeal: The actor gave some edgy, brilliant performances, and he wrote his own finest scene, the narcoleptic hustler's campfire soul-baring in My Own Private Idaho. Glatt did not speak to most of Phoenix's intimates and colleagues in any depth, when he spoke to them at all; much of his information is taken from magazine and newspaper articles, with no attempt at a unifying point of view. Puffy amusement for celebrity-trauma fans that lacks any fondness for its subject. (Photos, not seen)
Pub Date: March 15, 1995
ISBN: 1-55611-426-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Donald Fine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1995
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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