An ambiguous collaboration, with sundry forms of cross-marketing that raise a caveat lector sign for readers willing to take...
A sophisticated blend of memoir, biography, romantic travelogue, history and psychology, creating a marketable modern myth about a pseudo-saintly survivalist.
Sundeen (The Making of Toro: Bullfights, Broken Hearts and One Author's Quest for the Acclaim He Deserves, 2003, etc.) tells the tale about how he crossed paths with Daniel Shellabarger, aka Suelo, amid the hip atmosphere he calls “Moab Chic.” The author juxtaposes a suicide attempt by Suelo against his present lifestyle, evoking the image of the phoenix rising from the ashes: “Daniel Shellabarger died as a modern man driving his car over a cliff, and was reborn as an eternal man—without money or possessions, with only his two feet and two hands, trying to climb back to the top.” Some readers may find it difficult to figure out whether the subject is a saintly figure, a madman or a clever political huckster. In addition to the suicide attempt, Sundeen examines Suelo's repeated mental breakdowns over a period of a few years—“I may have sacrificed my sanity but have gained something indescribable that is eternal”—and then explains how Suelo now essentially lives without money. A dumpster-diver who has repudiated the modern cash economy and lives in a cave, he has also been a regular housesitter over more than two decades. In exchange for food and shelter, he barters his services and does volunteer work, but he does not accept money (or pay taxes). Suelo is not shy about self-promotion on his website and Facebook page, where he also promotes this book but gives top billing to his organizing efforts against banks and taxation. Hopefully he is genuine about his mostly impressive lifestyle choices, but it’s occasionally difficult to discern his motives from this text.
An ambiguous collaboration, with sundry forms of cross-marketing that raise a caveat lector sign for readers willing to take the plunge and read this modern picaresque.Pub Date: March 6, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-59448-569-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Nov. 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
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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