edited by Laurie Stone ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 2, 1997
On the crest of the ongoing memoir wave comes the inevitable anthologization of ``personal'' essays, in this grouping of eight diverse pieces edited and with an introduction by Nation theater critic Stone (Laughing in the Dark, p. 1095). Stone's excellent introduction, which addresses the memoir in our time and the culture of confession and recovery, reminds us why she is one of our most valued critics. Saying that she is suspicious of the genre and conscious of its pitfalls, she registers her respect for those writers who have ``mined self-knowledge and come clean with the goods,'' who ``retrieve themselves through language, lofting out of the murk of closeted secrets with the ordering instrument of candor.'' For her selections here she says she wanted material that was relatively unexplored in literature, and so here mixes ``daylit tales and fringescapes.'' Fringescapes, indeed. Phillip Lopate's quiet, extended reflection on his father, who lives in a nursing home, is a tame piece of storytelling as presented here alongside Jane Creighton's hothouse story of sibling incest, the 17-year-old writer named Terminator's graphic depictions of sexual abuse, Stone's own provocative descriptions of her experiences with bedroom dominance and submission, and Jerry Stahl's exhilarating picaresque of running wild and whacked with crackheads. Also included are father-portraits by Lois Gould and Catherine Texier, who describes her mother the French tart, and her meeting over lunch, as a grown woman, of the man previously present only at her conception. This book gathers much fine work, but is mainly for serious readers of autobiographical writing and admirers of writing ``on the edge.''
Pub Date: Oct. 2, 1997
ISBN: 0-8021-1618-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1997
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
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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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...
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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