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WHAT DID I DO?

Name: WHAT DID I DO?
Author: Larry Rivers
ISBN: 0-06-019007-8

THE UNAUTHORIZED AUTOBIOGRAPHY

by Larry Rivers with Arnold Weinstein ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992

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Showoff memoirs of an artist whose works stirred controversy during the Beat era and have been increasingly ignored ever since. Perhaps nostalgic for the days when he was regarded as the enfant terrible of painting, Rivers offers a reminiscence remarkable only for its tastelessness and lack of insight. Rivers recounts in numbing detail his sexual conquests (male and female), his halfhearted efforts to kick a heroin habit, and his self-proclaimed triumphs as a jazz hipster. He also discusses at length his problems with premature ejaculation and later with the adjustments necessary when his erect penis begins to look ``like a J-shaped sausage''—the result of a rare case of Peyronie's Syndrome. Meanwhile, Rivers's attitude toward women is porcine at best, and one of the unexplained mysteries here is just what his assorted wives and lovers seemingly found irresistible in his posturings. Many pages are devoted to Rivers's longtime relationship with Frank O'Hara, the early gay poet and ringmaster of the New York Abstract Expressionist circus. Here, the author displays a depth of feeling largely missing elsewhere. During a kind of summing-up, Rivers comes close to championing the proposition that women who have been raped probably were ``asking for it,'' though he is sensitive enough to admit ``that no one should be screwed against their will.'' Such aperáus aside, those interested in clues to Rivers's creative processes will be disappointed. From the evidence here, he seems to have had little, if any, cohesive artistic purpose. The kind of personal account that gives chutzpah a bad name. (Sixteen pages of color photographs—not seen; b&w illustrations throughout.)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-06-019007-8

Page Count: 500

Publisher: HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1992

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | 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)