Come for the scandalous marriage, but stay for the engaging cultural study of a time and place.
A debut memoir offers a wealth of mid-20th-century, upper-middle-class Jewish lore.
Krissel was born in 1941 into a Jewish upper-middle-class family. Her immigrant grandfather Morris became an extremely rich success, thanks to his brown grocery bag business. By the time she was born, he was the patriarch to whom abject obedience was owed. His two daughters, Kitty and Mimi, and their husbands lived cheek by jowl with one another and with Morris and his wife, Esther, on an estate in Mount Kisco, New York, or in an apartment house in Manhattan. In addition, the sons-in-law were dragooned into the family business. Kitty and Mimi filled their days schmoozing on the phone and shopping. In an age of robust anti-Semitism, there were Jewish country clubs, schools, and summer camps. About 20 families—“the Gang”—composed a very tightknit Jewish community, by choice and necessity. But when the author was to start ninth grade, Kitty decided to send her to a gentile, all-girls private high school—a fateful decision indeed. Krissel (who is referred to as “Toni” just once) was uncomfortable at first but eventually, because she was a good athlete, made friends. This breakthrough led inevitably to her meeting and marrying “Superwasp,” a lawyer whose forebears actually did come over on the Mayflower. The union produced three kids and still endures. Superwasp was accepted by the author’s family with surprisingly little trauma, with any objections basically being more cultural than religious. Krissel is a competent writer, offering some vivid anecdotes and rich historical details. But the memoir sometimes reads like diary jottings, and is a bit scattershot, as if recorded with the equivalent of a hand-held camera. One does wonder about the anonymity of it all. There are no surnames and “Superwasp” is all the author’s husband gets. This is Krissel’s right, of course, but readers will be naturally curious and find the approach a bit annoying. Still, as light entertainment, this book can hold its own: The audience will keep reading.
Come for the scandalous marriage, but stay for the engaging cultural study of a time and place.Pub Date: June 29, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5439-6256-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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