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ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

Name: ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
Author: Jon Lellenberg
ISBN: 978-1-59420-135-6

A LIFE IN LETTERS

edited by Jon Lellenberg & Daniel Stashower & Charles Foley ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2007

No major revelations or strong stylistic appeal, but an affecting self-portrait of a plainspoken, good-natured Englishman...

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A triple-decker helping of hitherto unpublished letters, mostly to his mother, by the man who hated to be known as the creator of Sherlock Holmes.

Conan Doyle (1859–1930) led a life more varied and eventful than any of his fictional heroes. Trained as a physician, he struggled for years toward literary success before achieving it overnight in 1891 with the Strand’s publication of “A Scandal in Bohemia.” Apart from producing a great deal of other writing—humor, fantasy, science fiction and the historical novels he hoped would be his most enduring legacy—he married twice, stood twice for the Parliament, was knighted for his defense of England in the Boer War, lost several close relatives in World War I and publicly embraced spiritualism in the last decade of his life. No one, however, would consider him a great letter writer. Although the editors have trimmed numberless accounts of his health and finances, many more remain, along with sales figures for his books and details of his public lectures. Occasionally Doyle’s invincibly prosaic style is eloquent. More often, the letters glow with the deeply rooted good nature and good sense of Holmes’s amanuensis, Dr. Watson, whose personality, on the basis of the evidence here, owed a great deal to his creator’s. Doyle’s letters to his mother are always affectionate but never intimate. Yet she clearly offered him the ideal audience for his reflections—after she died in 1920, no correspondent took her place, and the editors gloss over his final years in a few pages.

No major revelations or strong stylistic appeal, but an affecting self-portrait of a plainspoken, good-natured Englishman whose type has passed into history.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2007

ISBN: 978-1-59420-135-6

Page Count: 608

Publisher: Penguin Press

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2007

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
SHERLOCK HOLMES IN AMERICA
edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Jon Lellenberg and Daniel Stashower

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GHOSTS OF BAKER STREET
edited by Martin H. Greenberg ; Jon Lellenberg & Daniel Stashower

- BOOK REVIEW
MURDER IN BAKER STREET
edited by Martin H. Greenberg & Jon Lellenberg & Daniel Stashower

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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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.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)