A wild, unseemly, entertaining elegy that will appeal not just to lummox readers, related in street language that doesn't...
Proletarian novelist Magnuson (The Fire Gospels, 1998, etc.) provides a memoir of his younger days around Menomonee Falls and Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
A child of the ’60s, Magnuson (Creative Writing/Southern Illinois Univ.) writes his autobiographical sketches in the third person and in the vernacular with scant attention to grammatical niceties. The result is graphic, edgy, and (to use a favored locution) pretty much kickass. In his musically precocious youth, the author for a while pursued a grungy life in the music room of an abandoned elementary school. There, he kept a set of drums, drank copious amounts of beer, and contemplated the allure of nubile high-school cheerleaders. Occasionally, although he ran to pudge, young Mike even hooked up with a lubricious teenager. The next section shows our near-troglodyte tubby hero as a counselor in a juvenile group home, working with seriously troubled boys. Thence to life with some fierce feminists, lewd women, and several seriously troubled grownups. Clearly, this is not your TV-sitcom, family-style lummox. Yeah, he’s still big (“about 250 in the winter and 230 in the summer”), but within this boorish, bearish, boozing lout, this sweaty, tavern-haunting factory hand, is a perceptive, serious, and intelligent lummox caught in the guise of an oaf. Deep down, Magnuson admits, he's a pussycat. He has a true appreciation of Bach, Wagner, and Coltrane, Proust, Faulkner, and Dostoyevsky. As one of his juvenile charges told him, “you know all kinda shit you never get to tell anybody about.” Now the big guy gets to tell a bit of it, and it makes for kick-back, totally cool reading.
A wild, unseemly, entertaining elegy that will appeal not just to lummox readers, related in street language that doesn't hide the talent.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2002
ISBN: 0-06-019372-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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