by Lee Hill ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 2, 2001
May not prompt readers to devour the novels, but succeeds in recreating a reckless era and shows Southern as one of its...
A compassionate survey of the life and times of Dr. Strangelove screenwriter and 1960s bad boy Southern, revealed here as a man of great kindness and personal excess.
Arts writer Hill draws on a decade-long association with Southern as deep background for his biography, which is supported by the cooperation of the writer’s estate and dozens of interviews. Beginning with Southern’s rowdy, literary Texas youth, Hill charts his years (after WWII service) amidst the hip in Paris and Greenwich Village, highlighted by publication of novels—including The Magic Christian (whose outrageous protagonist, Guy Grand, shadowed Southern throughout his life). A summons to London from Stanley Kubrick to work on Dr. Strangelove inaugurated Southern’s retreat from the “Quality Lit” game into the bigger canvas of international filmmaking and the “real-life movie called the sixties.” Accomplishments ranging from Easy Rider to teaching at Columbia followed, as did drugs, liquor, and, finally, his death at 71 in 1995. Throughout, Hill is informed and low-key about Southern’s starry world, providing restrained briefs for newcomers on the people of the moment (like Henry Green), happening restaurants like Elaine’s, and the importance of appearing on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (as Southern did). The only problem with such vividness is that Hill’s discussions of Southern’s literary efforts pale in comparison, leaving his concluding analysis of “enduring influence” unconvincing. But Hill’s ability to capture the “blur of movement from one groovy scene to the next” points to how potent the high life was and how it must have affected Southern.
May not prompt readers to devour the novels, but succeeds in recreating a reckless era and shows Southern as one of its merry players. (illustrations not seen)Pub Date: March 2, 2001
ISBN: 0-380-97786-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2001
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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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