CONVERSATIONS WITH MCCARTNEY

Name: CONVERSATIONS WITH MCCARTNEY
Author: Paul Du Noyer
ISBN: 978-1-4683-1340-6

by Paul Du Noyer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2016

A welcome contribution to a growing body of serious but not solemn work about The Fabs before and after, the cute bassist in...

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“The world’s most famous living Liverpudlian” speaks.

McCartney has never been shy of speaking his mind. Here, he opens up, repeatedly and over several decades, to longtime NME correspondent and founding Mojo editor Du Noyer (Deaf School: The Non-Stop Pop Art Punk Rock Party, 2013, etc.) on all manner of topics, not least of them “the world’s most famous dead Liverpudlian,” he being, of course, fellow Beatle John Lennon. Sir Paul’s not just a Beatle, though he will go to his grave with that designation first and foremost. To judge by Du Noyer’s portrait, he is the cheeky and cheerful fellow of popular depiction, though he is also deeply thoughtful and capable of self-criticism, if not always very trenchant. Since Lennon’s murder 36 years ago, McCartney has labored to rebuild his image as the lite-pop Beatle against Lennon’s rocker, and here his conversations sometimes turn to such things as his Little Richard shout and penchant for blistering rockers like “Helter Skelter.” There are surprises aplenty for Beatles casualists; who knew that Linda sang the highest of the high notes on “Let It Be”? Du Noyer’s book has a slightly slapped-together feel, as if raw material for a more cohesive biography in times to come, but for all that, it contains bits and pieces that are suggestive and illuminating. At one point, McCartney recounts, for instance, being stuck in writing the song that would become “Drive My Car,” which well illustrates his thesis that the whole business of songwriting involves “some kind of mystery as to whether you’re going to pull it off.” Happily, Du Noyer concentrates on the substantive in these conversations, which are both thematically and chronologically arranged, avoiding celebrity fluff to get into the meat—beg pardon, Sir Paul being a vocal vegetarian and all—of his work.

A welcome contribution to a growing body of serious but not solemn work about The Fabs before and after, the cute bassist in particular.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-4683-1340-6

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Overlook

Review Posted Online: July 30, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS & CELEBRITY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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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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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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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.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)