Filthier than it needs to be, more self-aggrandizing than it should be, but more inspiring than you’d think it could be.
The slacker raconteur (slackonteur?) chronicles his offbeat career while seeking to inspire the next generation of creative thinkers.
Since bursting onto the indie scene with Clerks in 1994, Smith (My Boring Ass Life: The Uncomfortably Candid Diary of Kevin Smith, 2007, etc.) has carved out a unique niche, writing and directing a string of movies both critically praised (generally for the sharp writing) and panned (often for the lackluster directing), while also developing a cult following as a pop culture lecturer extraordinaire. Drawing on experiences from his eclectic career, he presents a mixed bag of self-deprecating humor, self-satisfied mooning, gossipy snark and a few truly golden nuggets of wisdom. Among the narrative’s high (or low) points are Smith’s contention that directing Bruce Willis was the equivalent of being held hostage by Hans Gruber; the tale of how mentor Harvey Weinstein, whom Smith has loyally defended for years, stiffed him at the opening of Smith’s Red State (the two haven’t spoken since); an in-depth account of Smith’s well-publicized eviction from a Southwest Airlines flight for being overweight; and a graphic description of a bout of self-gratification, which transpired as he stood behind his grudgingly tolerant, naked wife as she readied herself for an evening out. Though his never-ending cavalcade of bodily fluid–filled jokes wears thin, there’s a fascinating revelation within these pages: Despite having produced beloved and influential indie movies and critically acclaimed comics, Smith’s most innovative creation might just be Kevin Smith—a foul-mouthed, blarney-tongued pop culture savant who has built a touring and podcasting empire by mixing piquant loquacity with a heavy dose of Jersey earthiness.
Filthier than it needs to be, more self-aggrandizing than it should be, but more inspiring than you’d think it could be.Pub Date: March 20, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-592-40689-0
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Gotham Books
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
The book begins in Sri Lanka with the tsunami of 2004—a horror the author saw firsthand, and the aftermath of which he...
The latest from French writer/filmmaker Carrère (My Life as a Russian Novel, 2010, etc.) is an awkward but intermittently touching hybrid of novel and autobiography.
The book begins in Sri Lanka with the tsunami of 2004—a horror the author saw firsthand, and the aftermath of which he describes powerfully. Carrère and his partner, Hélène, then return to Paris—and do so with a mutual devotion that's been renewed and deepened by all they've witnessed. Back in France, Hélène's sister Juliette, a magistrate and mother of three small daughters, has suffered a recurrence of the cancer that crippled her in adolescence. After her death, Carrère decides to write an oblique tribute and an investigation into the ravages of grief. He focuses first on Juliette's colleague and intimate friend Étienne, himself an amputee and survivor of childhood cancer, and a man in whose talkativeness and strength Carrère sees parallels to himself ("He liked to talk about himself. It's my way, he said, of talking to and about others, and he remarked astutely that it was my way, too”). Étienne is a perceptive, dignified person and a loyal, loving friend, and Carrère's portrait of him—including an unexpectedly fascinating foray into Étienne and Juliette's chief professional accomplishment, which was to tap the new European courts for help in overturning longtime French precedents that advantaged credit-card companies over small borrowers—is impressive. Less successful is Carrère's account of Juliette's widower, Patrice, an unworldly cartoonist whom he admires for his fortitude but seems to consider something of a simpleton. Now and again, especially in the Étienne sections, Carrère's meditations pay off in fresh, pungent insights, and his account of Juliette's last days and of the aftermath (especially for her daughters) is quietly harrowing.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9261-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011
A potent depiction of grief, but also a book lacking the originality and acerbic prose that distinguished Didion’s earlier...
A moving record of Didion’s effort to survive the death of her husband and the near-fatal illness of her only daughter.
In late December 2003, Didion (Where I Was From, 2003, etc.) saw her daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne, hospitalized with a severe case of pneumonia, the lingering effects of which would threaten the young woman’s life for several months to come. As her daughter struggled in a New York ICU, Didion’s husband, John Gregory Dunne, suffered a massive heart attack and died on the night of December 30, 2003. For 40 years, Didion and Dunne shared their lives and work in a marriage of remarkable intimacy and endurance. In the wake of Dunne’s death, Didion found herself unable to accept her loss. By “magical thinking,” Didion refers to the ruses of self-deception through which the bereaved seek to shield themselves from grief—being unwilling, for example, to donate a dead husband’s clothes because of the tacit awareness that it would mean acknowledging his final departure. As a poignant and ultimately doomed effort to deny reality through fiction, that magical thinking has much in common with the delusions Didion has chronicled in her several previous collections of essays. But perhaps because it is a work of such intense personal emotion, this memoir lacks the mordant bite of her earlier work. In the classics Slouching Toward Bethlehem (1968) and The White Album (1979), Didion linked her personal anxieties to her withering dissection of a misguided culture prey to its own self-gratifying fantasies. This latest work concentrates almost entirely on the author’s personal suffering and confusion—even her husband and daughter make but fleeting appearances—without connecting them to the larger public delusions that have been her special terrain.
A potent depiction of grief, but also a book lacking the originality and acerbic prose that distinguished Didion’s earlier writing.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2005
ISBN: 1-4000-4314-X
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2005
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
