Novelist Markus (A Change of Luck, 1991, etc.), between her tendentious lionization of Elizabeth Barrett and bland veneration of Robert Browning, turns their complex union into a novelette romance for English majors. The unexpected marriage of the highly successful Barrett and the comparatively unknown Browning generated a perdurable literary legend, from the literary gossip columns of the day through Rudolph Besier's 1931 play, The Barretts of Wimpole Street (complete with tyrannical father and lovers' elopement), and the recent scholarly explosion of Barrett/Browning letters. Despite access to expansive archives and unpublished Barrett letters, Markus retells the story of this famous courtship and mythically happy marriage in familiarly sentimental terms: the invalid Barrett rescued from a Jamaican-born, slave-holding Victorian patriarch by the daring young lover and rejuvenated by an adventurous move to Italy. The author refers purply to ``the tears of things in [the Barrett] household'' and to Browning as a ``warriorstill in armor.'' Their brief marriage, cut short by Barrett's premature death, was addled by some tension over Browning's lack of success while his wife's poetic fame soared. Markus overplays the political element of Barrett's poetry—her fairly conventional abolitionism, her progressive feminism, and her support of the Italian Risorgimento- -to the total exclusion of her lyric qualities and prosodic experiments. Markus's critical understanding of Browning's poetry (beyond a few biographical facts) is minimal, though the period of their marriage saw his best work. Such blind spots occur in her individual portraits of the couple as well, such as her omission of Barrett's tyrannical treatment of her domestic staff and Browning's deep anxiety about his creative ability. Without psychological insight or historical grasp, Markus plunges this marital biography into Barrett's unilluminated obsessions with her father, depression, spiritualism, and (possible) Creole ancestry, while Browning is relegated to mere uxoriousness. (Illustrations, not seen)
Pub Date: Feb. 10, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-41602-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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