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ROBERT PENN WARREN

A BIOGRAPHY

A competent but occasionally opaque biography of the Pulitzer Prizewinning poet and novelist. Some artists are done in by the bottle. Others fall to academia, economics, or indolence. But for Robert Penn Warren (190589) it was the sheer volume of his literary output—hundreds of poems, ten novels, several textbooks, and countless essays—that ultimately diminished his prodigious talent. Sometimes, particularly early on with novels such as All the King's Men or poems like ``Bearded Oaks,'' he managed to wring out almost- masterpieces. Too often, though, there was a feeling of exhaustion to his work, a dÇjÖ vu sense of old themes plumbed once too often. Blotner (Faulkner, 1984, etc.) would rank Warren here in the empyrean heights, but his case is not quite convincing. Nor is it helped by his slightly perfunctory treatment of Warren's novels or his failure to reach a full critical understanding of his subject. Blotner has fallen for the easy seduction of biography—the childhood on a Kentucky farm, the marriages, the travels, the maladies (Warren always seemed to be ill with something)— forgetting that the artist is almost nothing without the art. As a member of the Fugitives, one of the southern literary renaissance's more active offshoots, Warren did much to shape modern American literature, though more through his teaching and his groundbreaking critical work (with the scholar Cleanth Books) than his art. The southern literary network was characterized by logrolling friendships and a broad base of average talent surmounted by a few lofty geniuses (most notably Faulkner). Still, Blotner has done a great deal of research and deployed it subtly, and we should welcome any biography that looks beyond the colossus of Faulkner to remind us of the South's enormous modern literary vitality. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen)

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1997

ISBN: 0-394-56957-1

Page Count: 544

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1996

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NIGHT

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

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

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