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JOHNNY'S GIRL

Name: JOHNNY'S GIRL
Author: Kim Rich
ISBN: 0-688-11836-4

A DAUGHTER'S MEMOIR OF GROWING UP IN ALASKA'S UNDERWORLD

by Kim Rich ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 23, 1993

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Superbly well-balanced and thoughtful reconstruction of a family life in the Anchorage underworld; based on Rich's series of articles that appeared in the Anchorage Daily News. ``Family life'' may be too loose a phrase to bind the fragments of existence excavated by Rich while digging up the bones of her murdered father and mad mother. She does an amazing job of searching out legal and hospital records, plus letters and diaries of her dead parents, and of interviewing cops, lawyers, former B- girls, and family members—all in an effort to lay to rest the ghosts within her. In the early 60's, her father, John Francis ``Johnny'' Rich, was a small-time bamboozler who worked whores in massage parlors, set up nude-photo sessions for all comers in his own home, assembled craps, poker, and blackjack games, and apparently pimped for his wife. And these were among the more openly shady of his dealings, which also included real-estate scams, an addiction to moonlight flights from landlords and creditors, longstanding wrangles with the IRS, and the double- dealing that got him killed in 1973, when Rich was 15. Unbeknownst to Johnny when he married her, Rich's mother, Frances Ann ``Ginger'' Chiaravalle, had been hospitalized for a mental breakdown at age 20. She kept her sanity during the first years of marriage by focusing on her newborn daughter and saving every scrap that attested to the child's existence. Rich was born in Hollywood, but the family shortly moved to Anchorage, with Frances sent ahead by Johnny to set herself up as a B-girl. Anchorage was an oil-rich frontier town, and Johnny swam in it as if born to the ooze, though Frances went to pieces and Rich endured endless midnight police raids on their house. After Frances died, Johnny married a teenage heroin addict, whom Rich fought with like a sister. Smartly written and compelling.

Pub Date: March 23, 1993

ISBN: 0-688-11836-4

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1993

Categories:

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

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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)