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THE TREEHOUSE

Name: THE TREEHOUSE
Author: Naomi Wolf
ISBN: 0-7432-4977-1

ECCENTRIC WISDOM FROM MY FATHER ON HOW TO LIVE, LOVE, AND SEE

by Naomi Wolf ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2005

Unexpectedly warm, intensely inspiring: a work for dreamers—and Leonard would say that means all of us.

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Twelve lessons on how to become an artist and/or live your dream, as dictated by the author’s father, poet and teacher Leonard Wolf.

Feminist Naomi Wolf broke onto the literary scene as a young woman, producing The Beauty Myth (1991) when she was still in her 20s. No wonder—even her elementary-school poetry had been critiqued with rigor. And what a critic she must have had. Despite its having been mediated through his daughter’s words and stretched to fit every student, his philosophy makes Leonard Wolf come across with the force of a thunderbolt, as an electric, commanding teacher. He is, Wolf says, a man who has always lived outside of convention, one who still inspires everyone he comes across—students, colleagues, casual acquaintances—to listen to their “heart's wisdom.” Even the family’s building superintendent learned to follow his dreams after speaking with Leonard. Still, like most children, the author spent many years fleeing her father’s dictums, though now, as a parent and teacher herself, she is eager to absorb his philosophy. And so, over the course of a single summer, he shares with her his essential lesson plan. His lessons—“Use Your Imagination,” “Do Nothing Without Passion,” “Pay Attention to the Details,” “Your Only Wage Will be Joy”—are illustrated by scenes from his life, challenges Wolf faces with her own students, and the Wolfs’ combined efforts to construct a solid tree house for Naomi’s daughter. Leonard’s peripatetic life, even without the accompanying philosophy, would make for good reading, and Naomi’s childhood, too, is unexpectedly entertaining, colored as it was by Leonard’s follow-your-heart philosophy. For cultural gossips, her story should be interesting if only for the glimpse of the fiery Naomi Wolf longing for a way to soften her voice and become a better listener.

Unexpectedly warm, intensely inspiring: a work for dreamers—and Leonard would say that means all of us.

Pub Date: May 1, 2005

ISBN: 0-7432-4977-1

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2005

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

- BOOK REVIEW
VAGINA
by Naomi Wolf

- BOOK REVIEW
MISCONCEPTIONS
by Naomi Wolf

- BOOK REVIEW
PROMISCUITIES
by Naomi Wolf

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

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...

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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.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)