Graceful snapshots of a life that lyrically coalesce into expressive declarations of identity and intimacy.
An unconventional literary self-portrait examining the relationships that shaped a writer’s identity.
Essayist Dieterich (thxthxthx: Thank Goodness for Everything, 2011) fully embraces the art of introspection in this unique memoir. Her prose, dispatched in pagelong ruminations, establishes thought-provoking connections among the multifaceted dynamics of twinning, fetal “vanishing twin syndrome,” and the author’s physical attractions. As a young ballet student, Dieterich watched herself on walls of mirrors, drawing close to fellow classmate Giselle in third grade. As teenagers, however, she was abruptly abandoned after Giselle acquired a boyfriend, lost her virginity, and broke the “comforting symmetry that had always made our friendship seem predestined.” The author admits to harboring a “terror of being alone,” so pursuing attachments she wasn’t entirely certain would prove successful came easily. She chronicles intense emotional connections to female classmates throughout her college years, just one of several forks “in the road on my sexual map.” The author eventually settled into a rhythm with artist and architect Eric, with whom she dashed across the country to cultivate a marriage. As the couple slowly merged into what Dieterich deemed to be a single synergistic organism, the arrangement slowly regressed beneath the weight of her desire for varietal stimulation and discontent with the sameness of a consistent partner. An open arrangement allowed her to probe her emerging queer sexuality further with women, and, through the revolving door of nonmonogamy, the author escaped into the arms of Elena, a filmmaker who mirrored her passion. Dieterich artfully compares her former lovers of both sexes to the sensation of standing too close to a mirror, unable to focus on anything within the blur. In these poetically written episodes, the author ponders the nature of love, attraction, and identity through literature, pop culture, psychology, femininity, and the delicate nuances of being a “beautiful and controlled” ballerina.
Graceful snapshots of a life that lyrically coalesce into expressive declarations of identity and intimacy.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-59376-291-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
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
SEEN & HEARD
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