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THE PRESIDENTIAL PAPERS

Name: THE PRESIDENTIAL PAPERS
Author: Norman Mailer

by Norman Mailer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 8, 1963

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Norman Mailer is the Hamlet of American Letters. A hipsterized Hamlet to sure, but Hamlet nonetheless. Throughout these papers, striking assorted poses, he patrols an Existentialist Elsinore where King Jack and Queen Jacqueline rule. Like Hamlet he throws off the Royal Act (finishing that novel, producing that play). Hamlet had his Romantic Ego, Mailer his Challenger Complex. Commenting on the contemporary scene he tosses everything and everybody into the ring: B-film dramatics, punchdrunk dialectics, padded muscles, genius out-of-joint. Set to capture the conscience of the Age, like Hamlet he too has a Message; its illustrations are many (Liberal Totalitarianism, Cancer, Drugs, Cold War, Sex), its names up-to-the-minute (the K's, the Mob, Genet, Castro, Liston). It's essentially thus: the Modern World is losing its Id. But like Hamlet's psychodrama, Mailer is forever testing himself here so he won't have to test himself there or vice versa. The Literary Racket, which of course he rants over, is his Rosencrantz & Guildenstern. The Court is the Establishment: he puts down, they pick him up by Talking About him, by thinking him Not Quite Sane, by fondling him as a Our Bum. And as with Hamlet, we're never sure he doesn't love it. The Ghost is Papa Hemingway. Ophelia is the use he keeps deserting. The only real successes here are Time & Being, Belly, and some parts of 10,000. They're pretty much fiction; the rest is "fact". And with fact Mailer at his best is like Hamlet at his worst: sophomoric without being soporific. From anyone else, as reportage his sociocultural cacciatore might seem superlative stuff. For him it's self-slaughter. Mailer had better polish his princely talents in the Kingdom of the Imagination, or he's through. And there will be no Fortinbras to sing the rites of war. (The original subtitle: The Murder of Good Ideas).

Pub Date: Nov. 8, 1963

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1963

- BOOK REVIEW
SELECTED LETTERS OF NORMAN MAILER
by Norman Mailer edited by J. Michael Lennon

- BOOK REVIEW
MIND OF AN OUTLAW
by Norman Mailer ; edited by Phillip Sipiora

- BOOK REVIEW
THE CASTLE IN THE FOREST
by Norman Mailer

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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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UNDER THE BRIDGE

by Rebecca Godfrey ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2005

A tour-de-force of true crime reportage.

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Godfrey reconstructs a horrific murder with a vividness found in the finest fiction, without ever sacrificing journalistic integrity.

The novel The Torn Skirt (2002) showed how well the author could capture the roiling inner life of a teenager. She brings that sensibility to bear in this account of the 1997 murder of a 14-year-old girl in British Columbia, a crime for which seven teenage girls and one boy were charged. While there’s no more over-tilled literary soil than that of the shocking murder in a small town, Godfrey manages to portray working-class View Royal in a fresh manner. The victim, Reena Virk, was a problematic kid. Rebelling against her Indian parents’ strict religiosity, she desperately mimicked the wannabe gangsta mannerisms of her female schoolmates, who repaid her idolization by ignoring her. The circumstances leading up to the murder seem completely trivial: a stolen address book, a crush on the wrong guy. But popular girls like Josephine and Kelly had created a vast, imaginary world (mostly stolen from mafia movies and hip-hop) in which they were wildly desired and feared. In this overheated milieu, reality was only a distant memory, and everything was allowed. The murder and cover-up are chilling. Godfrey parcels out details piecemeal in the words of the teens who took part or simply watched. None of them seemed to quite comprehend what was going on, why it happened or even—in a few cases—what the big deal was. The tone veers close to melodrama, but in this context it works, since the author is telling the story from the inside out, trying to approximate the relentlessly self-dramatizing world these kids inhabited. Given most readers’ preference for easily explained and neatly concluded crime narratives, Godfrey’s resolute refusal to impose false order on the chaos of a murder spawned by rumors and lies is commendable.

A tour-de-force of true crime reportage.