by Marianna De Marco Torgovnick ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1994
In this memoir Torgovnick (English/Duke Univ.) proves herself to be a rare breed: a cultural critic who writes lucidly and perceptively not only about her chosen texts, but about herself. The first half of the book consists of autobiographical essays on crossing boundaries of class, religion, education, and place, as an Italian-American woman. Torgovnick grew up in Bensonhurst, a working-class, predominantly Italian-American neighborhood in Brooklyn, N.Y. Ocean Parkway, which divides Bensonhurst from Sheepshead Bay (the middle-class, Jewish neighborhood into which she eventually married), symbolized upward mobility and the possibilities of life beyond the confines of her insular world. These essays describe her experiences as an academically successful girl in a community where intellectual expectations for girls were low; later, as a professor in a Waspy college town, she also felt herself an outsider. The book's latter half consists of essays of cultural criticism, on Italian-American icons such as The Godfather, as well as other American literary institutions—Dr. Dolittle, critic Lionel Trilling, and the canon. Torgovnick writes her critical pieces in the same intimate, personal voice she uses in the memoirs. Throughout, she is willing to revise and add complexity to her own narratives. In an epilogue on her father's death, for instance, she reflects that, although she felt that she was rebelling against him in ``crossing Ocean Parkway''—marrying Jewish, going to college, and moving out of the neighborhood—he may have been more of an ally than she had thought. He protested when she skipped grades in school, yet he also gave her books, took her into the city, and was a model of gender rebellion—pulling down the shades so the neighbors couldn't see him doing housework. Torgovnick's scholarly background and life experience inform her readings of both American culture and her own past; she has found an essayist's voice that is very much her own.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-226-80829-7
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Univ. of Chicago
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
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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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