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LAUGHING ON THE OUTSIDE

Name: LAUGHING ON THE OUTSIDE
Author: Martin Knelman
ISBN: 0-312-17179-X

THE LIFE OF JOHN CANDY

by Martin Knelman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 17, 1997

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There's something, perhaps a suffusing vulnerability, about large, funny men that gives these actors a real everyman quality. Such was the case with John Candy, whose talent far oustripped his career, but Knelman fails to penetrate the late actor's surface. Although he appeared in bomb after bomb, his sensitivity and perfect comic timing gained him legions of loyal fans; even in his worst movies, he usually offered something memorable. As Knelman relates, Candy got his start with the legendary Second City Comedy Troupe, which soon moved from its live improv roots to television and the groundbreaking comedy show SCTV. Here he was a standout, fashioning some of his most memorable characters and sharpest satirical bits. But Hollywood inevitably came calling, and after a few successful supporting roles, most notably in Splash, Candy was ready for top billing at $3 million a picture. With a few exceptions, such as Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, his judgment in scripts was appalling. His business sense wasn't much better; seduced by a charlatan entrepreneur into buying part of the Toronto Argonaut football franchise, Candy came close to bankruptcy. Though Knelman, a Canadian journalist, tries to make the case that Candy was desperately unhappy inside (as the comedian clichÇ must go), he in fact seems to have been little affected by the Hollywood viper pit. He behaved decently to most friends and colleagues, stayed happily married, and was a good father. But he couldn't control his eating or his smoking. Few were surprised when he had a fatal heart attack at the age of 43, in the middle of filming another forgettable comedy. Like a drugstore gumball, this standard-issue biography of the late, semi-great comic actor John Candy is too sweet, too small, and offers almost nothing to chew on. (12 pages b&w photos, not seen)

Pub Date: Sept. 17, 1997

ISBN: 0-312-17179-X

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1997

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS & CELEBRITY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

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...

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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.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)