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THE ONLY THING THAT COUNTS

Name: THE ONLY THING THAT COUNTS
Author: Matthew J. Bruccoli
ISBN: 0-684-81562-1

THE ERNEST HEMINGWAY-MAXWELL PERKINS CORRESPONDENCE, 1925-1947

edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 5, 1996

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Underneath the usual authorial complaints about royalties and editorial requests for finished manuscripts, Hemingway's dedication to his craft, and Perkins's to Hemingway, come through in this carefully abridged selection. Elsewhere Hemingway wrote, ``Plenty of times people who write the best write the worst letters.'' But he only occasionally exemplifies this rule himself. His correspondence with august editor Maxwell Perkins, spanning the businesslike and the personal, has the benefit of focusing on Hemingway's literary career, which sprawled through the Selected Letters (1981). Here we get to look over their shoulders during Hemingway's early time with Scribner's, in which he often has to defend (and sometimes amend) his use of strong language, starting with The Sun Also Rises, and to battle against cuts in magazine serializations (``Half the writing I do is elimination''). In this rich, sometimes swamping flow of letters, we see Hemingway's guard going gradually, but never totally, down and Perkins moving from literary associate to confidant (thanks to a fishing trip to Key West). Amid the quotidian debates about advertising and royalty advances, Perkins also has to insert himself into the Fitzgerald-Hemingway rivalry (Hemingway's side is candid but brutal) and diplomatically participate in literary feuds with Gertrude Stein and others, and critical skirmishes, notably involving Max Eastman, whom Hemingway wrestled to the floor in Perkins's office. Given Hemingway's fundamental unreliability about himself, Fitzgerald maven Bruccoli (Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1981, etc.) has something less than a biographic account, even after judicious assembly, sundry cuts, and helpful footnotes and chronologies. Still, these letters deliver the documentary evidence, sometimes unflatteringly, but always for Hemingway's serious craftsmanship and Perkins's subtle caretaking. Although the volume represents only a fractional side of Hemingway's life, it carries his last word on Perkins: ``You are my most trusted friend as well as my God damned publisher.'' (illustrations, not seen)

Pub Date: Nov. 5, 1996

ISBN: 0-684-81562-1

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1996

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
JOHN O’HARA’S HOLLYWOOD
by John O'Hara & edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli

- BOOK REVIEW
THE EASIEST THING IN THE WORLD
by George V. Higgins & edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli

- BOOK REVIEW
CATCH AS CATCH CAN
by Joseph Heller & edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli & Park Bucker

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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)