by Nancy K. Miller ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2011
Painstakingly detailed at times, this quiet memoir is saved by Miller's deftly placed literary references, which offer an...
A literature professor searches for her roots after her father's death, uncovering an intricate portrait of a Russian-Jewish immigrant family.
Miller (English/Graduate Center, CUNY; But Enough About Me: Why We Read Other People’s Lives, 2002, etc.) was so distanced from her father's side of the family that, when she divorced, she adopted her mother's maiden name, rather than returning to Kipnis, her original surname. Though her parents were married and her father was always a consistent figure in her life, the author grew up close with her maternal relatives and almost entirely estranged from the Kipnis clan. Of particular curiosity were the uncle and first cousin that she'd never met. After her father died, Miller discovered a stash of old photographs and letters that piqued her curiosity: Who were the Kipnises, and why were they not a part of her life? To find out, she began deciphering clues, translating letters, tracking down army records, identifying long-dead figures in old photographs, connecting in person with her aging cousin and his family and eventually traveling back to Eastern Europe. What emerges is a story that will seem familiar to many Jewish families scattered across the diaspora: two sons carrying the pressures of their immigrant parents and responding differently to their freedom and opportunities. As with most, there are several skeletons in the Kipnis closet—suicide, divorce in a time when it was rare, womanizing and even some potential ties to the mob. But more than any particular scandal, Miller was shocked by the degree to which she became entrenched in her family's story, with each answered question not satiating but rather fueling her curiosity. Ever the professor, Miller turns to fiction to understand her own narrative, channeling E.L. Doctorow, Marilynne Robinson, Aleksandar Hemon and many others to help articulate her past.
Painstakingly detailed at times, this quiet memoir is saved by Miller's deftly placed literary references, which offer an unusual, intellectual perspective on an often-told story.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8032-3001-9
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Univ. of Nebraska
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2011
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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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