Close readings of Browning’s work done with a deft, light hand.
Husband of the more famous Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett emerges his own man in the 30 years after her death in this sprightly life by British biographer Neville-Sington (Fanny Trollope, 1998).
Neville-Sington’s thesis, though not new, asserts that Browning, who had spirited the invalid poet away from her father to the more beneficial clime of Florence, was so absorbed in EBB’s care and sensibility for the next 15 years they spent together that he was thwarted from finding his true voice until after her death in 1861. Although his masterly Men and Women was published well into their marriage (1855), it was not received kindly in England, and the disheartened Browning did not attempt another collection until Dramatis Personae, ten years later, after he had left Italy to move back to England to raise their son, Pen. While the poets were together, Browning considered EBB his beloved Muse, and felt certain that he could write his best work only next to her; she, in turn, believed he was the better poet of the two. His poetry was considered both terribly obscure (“unintelligible,” according to Thomas Carlyle) and “strikingly modern” by the Pre-Raphaelites. The morbid tone of subsequent works such as The Ring and the Book could not have been written while EBB was still alive, notes Neville-Sington, because she could not abide by Browning’s lugubrious bent and penchant for sordid detail. Although he swore to her he would never remarry (she urged him to), he did entertain literary flirtations with Lady Ashburton, Julia Wedgwood and the American Katharine Bronson. Interestingly, the author charts the transformation of Pen from coddled mother’s boy with flowing locks she couldn’t bear to cut, to English gentleman and well-regarded painter at the Royal Academy, to the enormous pride of his father. Neville-Sington encompasses a lively era of ideas, and remains dutifully sympathetic, lovingly so, of the poet couple.
Close readings of Browning’s work done with a deft, light hand.Pub Date: March 15, 2006
ISBN: 0-75381-864-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
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
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
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BOOK REVIEW
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