An uneven collection of tributes to Wallace Stegner— meticulous novelist, historian, chronicler of the American West, wilderness advocate—edited by his son, Page (Outposts of Eden, 1989, etc.), and wife, Mary. Stegner's writings have appealed to a wide audience, garnering O. Henry and Pulitzer and National Book awards (he accepted), and the National Medal for the Arts from the NEA (he declined, believing the NEA had been politicized by the Reagan administration). Edward Abbey, never one to lavish praise, once declared Stegner ``the only living American worthy of the Nobel.'' And when Stegner died from injuries sustained in an auto accident, at 83, the outpouring of grief was a measure of the man. Gathered here are remembrances written hard on the occasion of his death, celebrating his novels full of natural light, his years as a teacher, his gentle patriarchal presence at Breadloaf, his superlative ``Wilderness Letter'' (wherein wilderness is the geography of hope). A few leaden items in this volume simply outline their subject's passage (some editorial pruning was in order, as well: Readers are informed all too often that Stegner was born in Iowa in 1909), including T.H. Watkin's indulgent, spuriously intimate ``Letter to Mary.'' The anecdotal encounters shine: After a slow drive with Stegner through a Utah landscape, Terry Tempest Williams says, ``Thank you so much for coming.'' ``Thank you for staying,'' he returns. John Daniels, then a self-conscious poet living in a cabin on Stegner's property, hears on one of his strolls ``a rainlike patter'' coming from the Stegner porch, only to find Stegner urinating over the rail of his deck. ``Welcome to the country,'' he said with a grin. ``We're not very formal.'' More than a few of the uninitiated, and doubtless the old guard as well, will be reaching for one of Stegner's 30-odd books after reading these collected appreciations.
Pub Date: June 27, 1996
ISBN: 0-87156-883-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1996
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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