Amazingly dull for such a relatively short text concerning a group of brilliant artists during a lively cultural period.
Dreary biography of the writer best known for his 12-novel sequence, A Dance to the Music of Time.
Indeed, British journalist Barber’s main interest here seems to be in telling readers exactly which real-life people inspired the series’ fictional characters. This could be interesting, since Powell (1905–2000) numbered among his acquaintances such leading literary figures as Evelyn Waugh, George Orwell, Malcolm Muggeridge, and Cyril Connolly. But Barber’s approach is numbingly literal (an interminable discussion of which Oxford don was the basis for the manipulative Professor Sillery, for example), and he does little to convey the distinctive qualities of Powell’s work. The author’s other primary concern, making sure readers realize that he personally met many of these distinguished folk, similarly provides scant insight and plenty of annoyance; not many biographers are so eager to document contact with their subject that they would quote a journal entry in which Powell, commenting on being interviewed by Barber, describes him as “an uninspiring figure, to say the least.” Readers willing to wade through such tangential material can glean a few facts about Powell’s privileged background (Eton, Oxford), his party-going days as a Bright Young Thing in the 1920s, the mildly conservative and largely apolitical stance that put him at odds with London’s left-wing literary climate of the ’30s, his military service during WWII, etc. They will learn almost nothing about the artistic convictions or intentions that prompted A Dance to the Music of Time; Barber doesn’t even bother to properly explain that the title comes from a painting by Poussin, merely tossing off a reference that assumes his readers already know all about it. His habit of referring to fictional characters as though they were real people will be equally irritating to those who picked this up assuming they might find it interesting even if they were not familiar with every word Powell wrote.
Amazingly dull for such a relatively short text concerning a group of brilliant artists during a lively cultural period.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2004
ISBN: 1-58567-618-7
Page Count: 338
Publisher: Duckworth/Overlook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2004
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 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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