Both sincere and subversive, Pollack will likely inspire more than one reader to commit to yoga.
Freelance journalist Pollack (Alternadad, 2007, etc.) seeks to reclaim his better self within the ridicule-friendly world of yoga.
Once upon a time, the author was a hot writer, a charmingly comedic iconoclast ever ready to poke a sharp stick in the eye of convention. The world at his doorstep, he did the “full retard,” making a narcissistic ass of himself, fueled by a steady intake of recreational intoxicants. His descent was meteoric. In a review of his novel Never Mind the Pollacks (2003), the New York Times Book Review wrote that Pollack had gone from incandescent satirist to an “ordinary humor dork, yet another doughy, 35-ish white man with a goatee and thinning hair.” When his agent stopped calling, the author decided to regroup and, at the suggestion of his wife, try yoga. However, yoga—or at least its wayward applications: “high-priced self-empowerment for the over-privileged creative class”—is just the kind of activity that Pollack used to demolish with satire. But something clicked. He hasn’t abandoned snark and cynicism—they are the lifeblood of this quest, along with a healthy dose of self-abasement—but at his unassuming local yoga place, he found that the practice “calmed his inner pervert.” His circumstantial rage was chilled as he sweat through the routines, but he’s still a yoga bad boy, a bong-hitting carnivore with a taste for laughter, which makes him a highly entertaining guide as he investigates the good, bad and ugly of the yoga spectrum, from yogathons to yoga competitions to freestyle yoga rap. There is also a lovely authenticity to his discovery of his yoga fundamentalism—“the words of ancients and a few sacred physical principles that humans have been practicing since the dawn of time.”
Both sincere and subversive, Pollack will likely inspire more than one reader to commit to yoga.Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-172769-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Perennial/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2010
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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