it haunting.
An ingenious, outsize myth-meets-facts "life and works" of the charismatic global citizen and compulsive tale-teller.
Prizewinning political novelist Shakespeare (The Dancer Upstairs, 1997, etc.) carefully situates Chatwin (1940–88) in each milieu where he sought, then outgrew, mentors: boarding school, Sotheby's, archaeological digs, the London Sunday Times, world capitals' gay subworlds. An active if conflicted bisexual, he mesmerized relatives, friends, colleagues, lovers, and critics, who turn up here to voice every shade of judgment concerning his marathon monologues ("Bruce on form could be the song the sirens sang"—unless "he murdered people with talk"), his "ascetic de luxe" style of writing and living, his overdrive curiosity. (He could have claimed as his credo "I need desperately to know certain things.") The incremental portrait of Elizabeth Chanler proves that finding this resilient, independent, dedicated American was Chatwin's "greatest luck": Whatever his wildest forays, their 23-year marriage remained his ultimate refuge. Shakespeare tracks the restless wanderer as he scavenges the world for experience he encapsulated in dazzling verbal edifices that defy classification. In Patagonia (1978), the most legendary travel book of its time, revived that region of Argentina; The Songlines (1987) appropriated and enlarged upon aboriginal cosmology. A thirst for the marvelous pursued Chatwin to the last. Records confirm he died riddled by a rare South Asian fungus fostered by the AIDS he never admitted to, which elevated him to baroque hallucinations and hypomania before his death at 48. Though impressed by the man's unfettered brilliance, Shakespeare evenhandedly displays every persona constituting "The Chatwin Effect," from solipsistic na‹f to literary wonder-worker, mountebank sponger to golden-haired Prometheus. This spirited tell-all will make newcomers yearn to try his books. An unflinching reconstruction of a singular writer's scorching trajectory through life: Speed makes it concise; fate makes
it haunting. (Family tree, photos, not seen) (Author tour)Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2000
ISBN: 0-385-49829-2
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2000
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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