Jazz critic and social writer Hentoff recalls his early years and formative influences in this stream-of-consciousness memoir. In his boyhood, the charmingly corrupt Mayor James Michael Curley ruled City Hall, the sermons of Father Coughlin ruled the radio (at least on Sundays), and the neighborhood of Roxbury, where Nat grew up, was already considered a ghetto—for Jews. Today a regular contributor to the Village Voice, Hentoff reveals himself as a rebel from way back, at age 13 organizing his fellow candystore clerks (and winning them a 10¢ wage increase). But life was mainly bounded by the twin "J's" of Jazz and Judaism. The young Hentoff collected records even before he owned a record player, so entranced was he by the new sounds of Duke Ellington and Fats Waller: "There were more different colors in this music than in all the Boston Museum of Fine Arts." The relationship with religion was a more troubled love affair, but Hentoff never failed to thrill at the rabbi's prayer-chant at services or the klezmorim musicians that performed during weddings. The link between the love of the Yiddish bands and the Big Bands is not, he insists, that far-fetched. "So where do you think Benny Goodman came from?," a klezmer clarinetist asks him. When it sticks to memories like that, the book is charming and moving. But as it goes along, Boston Boy shrinks in scope, becomes more of a recital of the increasingly smart-ass author's triumphs—Hentoff receiving the confidences of wise old jazz musicians, Hentoff conning the Fulbright Scholarship office into early acceptance. Especially self-indulgent is a section on a Jewish high-school student in 1984, who endured threats and hate mall because she refused to recite the Hedge of Allegiance. Hentoff has extensively written about the incident ever since; the sole rationale for its inclusion here seems to be his stated credo that "Ever since [college], everyone's free-speech rights have been my business." Such egotism ultimately sours Boston Boy. In the grand scheme of things, Hentoff's life isn't exactly time-capsule material; even so, this jazz buff should learn the difference between memoir-writing and personal horn-blowing.
Pub Date: April 15, 1986
ISBN: 096796752X
Page Count: 222
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1986
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
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
SEEN & HEARD
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