An engrossing logbook of an American soldier/aviator’s career and thoughts.
A debut memoirist reflects on his life in flight, both as an attack pilot in Vietnam and a civilian, and the split-second choices that changed everything.
Gibson emphasizes that he tends to have the U.S. Marine mindset of self-esteem, verging on braggadocio. Yet he practically begs a reader’s pardon up front that his book is not much of a polished, coherent narrative but more of a chronology of disconnected short pieces. It is a conversational account of his life and times as an aviator, most notably flying for the Marines as an attack pilot in Vietnam. Determined to go aloft, Gibson originally intended to join the Air Force, but something as simple as choosing a different parking space led to his seeing a Marine recruiter instead—part of a recurring theme throughout the passages, on and off the battlefield, of how a seemingly minor turn of fate can alter an entire lifetime. An ardent patriot, Gibson flew combat missions as the country’s mood turned against the Vietnam War, witnessing the sacrifices and brotherhood of America’s fighting men—and yet also the grudges felt by ground troops against the pilots hurtling overhead, who were assumed to be somehow in a “cleaner” arena. He does not bang a drum much over political controversies but offers a scenario whereby Ho Chi Minh could have hastened the conquest of South Vietnam and Saigon by several years, cutting short the excruciating casualties on both sides; thus, no more talk about Ho as a military genius. In peacetime mode, Gibson pays vibrant tribute to the vintage 1946 Taylorcraft airplane he long owned and flew and to the joys of looping. He amusingly and belatedly realizes (courtesy of his voluminous reading) that an officer against whom he once played bridge was the legendary Marine ace pilot Donald Conroy, immortalized by novelist-son Pat Conroy in The Great Santini. Gibson need not apologize for his memoir’s organization. This is a fine, highly readable series of remembrances. Could a big-city book editor (probably a secret Ho admirer) have tightened up these recollections into a more smoothly greased manuscript? Maybe, but Gibson earns his medals anyway for vivid stories well-told.
An engrossing logbook of an American soldier/aviator’s career and thoughts.Pub Date: July 6, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4685-7997-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
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.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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