Namath was no angel, thank goodness, but this evocative portrait shows him at play in the fields of magic.
Meaty biography of Broadway Joe from sports-columnist-turned-novelist Kriegel (Bless Me, Father, 1995).
The sooty mill towns in western Pennsylvania have churned out a host of professional football players, but none left a mark on the sport like Joe Namath, the handsome bad boy, boozer, and womanizer from Beaver Falls. Just a few months ago, Namath turned to alcoholic rehabilitation and disappeared from the public eye. Good thing, too, Kriegel writes in this detailed work, for in his last public appearance on national TV, he drunkenly told a sports reporter that he could care less about the game and would rather be kissing her. But then, that was the Joe we knew and loved, “disheveled, but happy,” doing what he liked and thumbing his nose at authority (unless that authority wore the name Bear Bryant, who coached Namath at the University of Alabama). Kriegel does a nice job portraying the two Namaths. One was a football player of intuitive genius who could read the developing angles in sports where that type of calculus mattered (football, pool, golf). The second Namath had a far more difficult time reading the emotional complexity of his life, particularly all that booze and all those women. Some of his antics were stupefying, but others defined the new braggadocio beat that a few athletes brought to the culture. While not of the same ilk as Mohammad Ali, judges Kriegel, Namath was a touchstone in an age of defiance; he managed to get on the enemy lists of both J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon. Plus, he was simply brilliant at what he did on the field, delivering on his promises in a way a politician never could or would. Kriegel has also uncovered a lot of terrific backstory from friends and coaches and sportswriters.
Namath was no angel, thank goodness, but this evocative portrait shows him at play in the fields of magic.Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2004
ISBN: 0-670-03329-4
Page Count: 452
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2004
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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