art's most distinctive figures. (16 color and 31 b&w illus., not seen)
Eloquently and movingly, music critic and biographer Matossian (Xenakis, not reviewed) plumbs the mystery surrounding
painter Arshile Gorky, born Manoug Adoian (1902–1948). Matossian lyrically sketches Manoug's troubled childhood in Khorkum near picturesque Lake Van, Armenia, in which the boy, though late in speaking and often silent, early showed a proclivity for drawing and painting. Tragedy, later reflected in his paintings, pervaded the artist's childhood: He endured the Turkish anti-Armenian pogrom of 1908 and the attempted genocide of 1915–20; his father fled to America when he was six; and as refugees in 1919, he and his sister Vartoosh witnessed the death from privation of their beloved mother Shushan, whom the artist would obsessively paint for the rest of his life. In 1920, Manoug and Vartoosh fled for America, where he eventually drifted into New York art circles, assumed the name Gorky, and quickly established himself as an important artist in the tradition of Cezanne and Picasso: later, he was influenced by Surrealist painter Roberto Matta. While not neglecting Gorky's art—some important works are analyzed in depth, and Gorky's often inventive techniques are described in detail—Matossian is also interested in the painter’s complex psychology, his usually easygoing but sometimes turbulent personality, his delight in line and color, his tumultuous relationships with women. Basing her narrative on interviews with surviving members of the artist's family, Matossian recounts the tragedies that continued to punctuate his life: Between 1946 and 1948, most of his paintings were destroyed in a fire; he suffered first cancer and then paralysis in a car accident; and he was abandoned by his wife, who betrayed him with Matta. Deprived of his work and his family, he committed suicide. A powerfully researched, thoughtful, and sensitive biography of a tragic hero of American painting, and one of 20th-century
art's most distinctive figures. (16 color and 31 b&w illus., not seen)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-58567-006-5
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2000
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
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