by J.R. Helton ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 2, 2018
A series of scattered “dispatches” that fail to cohere.
Helton (The Jugheads, 2014, etc.) wanders through a series of reminiscences of drugged states, dead-end jobs, and “writing feverishly,” trying to make it as an author.
In this memoir—labeled as such even though the author has altered his name as well as those of his associates and added fictional incidents—Helton roughly follows “Jake” from 1983, when he dropped out of the University of Texas, until 1989, when he re-enrolled. Two threads unite the episodic narrative: the narrator’s stumbling into and out of a number of menial jobs, which allow the constant consumption of marijuana and other drugs, and his unhappy relationship with his wife, Susan. The sections of the story about his jobs painting industrial buildings, picking up railroad ties for future sale, and selling pumpkins and turf from the side of a road have a certain rough charm even if he sometimes seems to be slumming. Quick sketches of fellow workers, such as the “long-haired-loser-hillbilly-racist” who assisted Helton in painting a baptismal pool with “poisonous epoxy,” are minidramas in themselves, and the author demonstrates that he was self-aware enough to recognize the detriments of constantly remaining high. The thread involving his ex-wife is less compelling and seems motivated more by a desire for literary revenge than for a true understanding of their relationship. Susan goes from a fellow high schooler with an “insatiable sex drive” (the results of which Helton describes in excruciating detail) to a cheating, lying harpy against whom Helton has the final word. Throughout, the prose is hampered by the author’s frequent use of overly familiar words like “nice” and “fun.” It’s possible that Helton has deliberately assumed a flat, disaffected tone and a drab vocabulary, but it’s difficult to discern the purpose, and many readers will be turned off by the degenerate characters and the author’s inability to describe his life with precision.
A series of scattered “dispatches” that fail to cohere.Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63149-287-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2017
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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.
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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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 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
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