by Mona Z. Smith ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 2004
Nonetheless, a valuable first attempt to restore a heroic figure to his rightful place in American cultural and political...
Serviceable biography of the pioneering African-American actor, staunch civil-rights advocate, and blacklist victim.
Before he ever walked onstage, Canada Lee (1907–52) had been a classical violinist, a professional jockey, and a prizewinning boxer, and he fought throughout his acting career for roles that reflected the full range of black people's characters and experiences. His biographer, a former reporter for the Miami Herald, adequately outlines Lee's achievements. He played Banquo in Orson Welles' “voodoo Macbeth,” Caliban in The Tempest, and Daniel de Bosola in The Duchess of Malfi—the first actor of color to perform a classical role in whiteface. He became a star in 1941 as Bigger Thomas in the stage version of Native Son and took every opportunity provided by his new fame to proclaim that America did not give equal rights to all. (A patriotic supporter of the war effort, he fiercely denounced segregation in the army.) Lee did his best to make the black steward in Hitchcock's Lifeboat less stereotyped and created a dignified, noble character in the boxing drama Body and Soul. But his long history of progressive activism got him named as a “fellow traveler” in 1949 by several journalists, including his longtime friend Ed Sullivan (the two never spoke again). Work dried up at home, while a role overseas in the film of Cry, the Beloved Country made him a vehement opponent of South Africa's vicious apartheid system. Stress and anxiety exacerbated the health problems that led to his death from kidney failure at age 45. Smith, who had the cooperation of Lee's widow, paints an attractive portrait of a man who loved a good time, always offered a helping hand to his friends, and continued to support the causes he believed in even after he knew what the consequences would be. The author’s pedestrian prose and laundry-list approach to narrative, alas, don't spark much excitement.
Nonetheless, a valuable first attempt to restore a heroic figure to his rightful place in American cultural and political history.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-571-21142-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2004
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 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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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...
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.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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