A disappointingly superficial account of the life of one of popular music’s elder statesmen. Veteran pop-music critic Lydon (Writing and Life, 1995, etc.) follows Charles’s journey from his childhood in Florida, where he lost his brother and mother as well as his sight, by the age of 15, his life at a school for deaf and blind children (where he distinguished himself with both his intelligence and his mischief), and the launch of his professional career in Seattle at age 17. While in Seattle, Charles meets an even younger Quincy Jones and forms an extremely important, lifelong friendship. Lydon chronicles Charles’s juggernaut to fame and his simultaneous descent into heroin addiction in the 1950s and ’60s, through his hibernation during the 1970s, and finally his political appearances singing “America the Beautiful” at party conventions and his jingles in the cola wars. Drug arrests and subsequent litigation form a substantial part of Lydon’s narrative. Finally given an ultimatum by a judge (he could choose prison or his career), Charles kicks his habit. However, as Lydon describes it, alcoholism remains a daily part of Charles’s life, and Lydon is surprisingly blasÇ about the subject, noting that Charles drinks all day long but never showing the musician seeking treatment or even acknowledging that his daily drinking is a problem. Lydon is a facile writer, but his failure to delve into the meatier parts of Charles’s life—particularly his relationships with his wives and children—in any depth is disappointing. Similarly, Charles’s progression to blindness over several years is covered in only a couple of pages. It’s been 20 years since Charles’s autobiography was published; time was ripe for a new look at his life. Ironically, Lydon notes that the autobiography has “only one fully fleshed-out character: Brother Ray”; the same could be said for his own work. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Jan. 11, 1999
ISBN: 1-57322-132-5
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
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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