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FOR THE HELL OF IT

Name: FOR THE HELL OF IT
Author: Jonah Raskin
ISBN: 0-520-20575-8

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ABBIE HOFFMAN

by Jonah Raskin ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1997

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An insightful biography that paints provocateur extraordinaire Abbie Hoffman as the paradigm of the 1960s. Raskin (Communication Studies/Sonoma State Univ.), a longtime confederate of Hoffman's, writes against a handicap: His obligation as a biographer is to make sense of Hoffman's life, but Hoffman's genius was in creative nonsense, in thumbing his nose (and other parts of his anatomy) at just such attempts at intellectualization. Indeed, descriptions of Abbot Howard Hoffman's upbringing in a middle-class Jewish household in Worcester, Mass., and his early attempts at family and career seem so out of sync with his later, radicalized persona, that readers new to Hoffman might wonder why such a boringly normal guy deserves a serious academic biography. But Raskin, wisely, does not attempt here to capture the essence of Hoffman's antiestablishment theatrics. Instead, the author presents Hoffman as the quintessential 1960s figure: ``The arc of his biography intersected with the trajectory of history.'' Hoffman understood better than most leftists that America had entered a media age where linear ``thoughts were out; icons and images were in,'' and he knew what outrageous forms would get the most coverage in the media—such as throwing dollar bills onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Ö la Jesus and the money changers at the Temple. Hoffman, in his ability to call attention to America's injustices and discontents, embodied the triumphs of the '60s. And then, Raskin argues, his 1989 suicide, at age 52, epitomized its failures. Madison Avenue coopted the movement's symbols, and ``radicals and hippies . . . fell into the ranks of respectability.'' The cultural, generational, nonideological revolution waged by Hoffman and his fellow Yippies simply could not be sustained outside the context of the 1960s. Raskin's Hoffman is as flawed and compelling, brilliant and obtuse as the America against which he protested. Raskin puts Hoffman into his American context and offers fascinating insight into both. (25 b&w photos, not seen)

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1997

ISBN: 0-520-20575-8

Page Count: 286

Publisher: Univ. of California

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1996

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORICAL & MILITARY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

- BOOK REVIEW
FIELD DAYS
by Jonah Raskin and photographed by Paige Green

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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)