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CONFESSIONS OF A RAVING, UNCONFINED NUT

MISADVENTURES IN THE COUNTERCULTURE

Actually, on the evidence here, Krassner—founder/editor of The Realist and the most outrageous cultural critic of his era—no longer raves now that he's in his 60s. Which is just as well, because otherwise it's hard to imagine the provocateur who published spurious outtakes of The Death of a President that had LBJ having sex with JFK's corpse being mellowed out enough to write this affectionate memoir of his countercultural life and times. Much of the fun here comes from sharing Krassner's gallery of famous friends, limned in generally crisp portraits and starting with publisher Lyle Stuart, who in 1958 bankrolled The Realist; Stuart's then-employer, Bill Gaines of Mad; and, a bit later, comic/junkie Lenny Bruce. As The Realist's fame grew, so did Krassner's circle, which came to encompass Groucho Marx (who took LSD with the author and soared on Bach); Abbie Hoffman (gutsy, wired) and Jerry Rubin (with whom Krassner formed the Yippie Party); Ken Kesey, Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, John Lennon; Manson-slaves Sandra Good and Squeaky Fromme (who nearly seduced Krassner into a mÇnage Ö trois); and Larry Flynt (who in the late 70's hired Krassner as publisher of Hustler). Also nostalgia-worthy are Krassner's sepia-tinged memoirs of his N.Y.C. childhood (especially a humorous run-in with a dwarf at Coney Island) and of his first glimmers of the absurd. More personal-emotional and less interesting are his recollections of his paranoid breakdown in the 70's, and, a decade later, of his grappling with his daughter's sexual awakening; more scattered are his most recent memories, of reviving The Realist and joining the 60's Memory Lane circuit. There's little of the edgy naughtiness here that, at its peak, had Krassner publish an infamous cartoon of Disney characters at an orgy; what's taken its place is an engaging avuncular impishness that Krassner wears well—and even with dignity. (Sixteen pages of b&w photographs—not seen) (First serial to Playboy and High Times)

Pub Date: Oct. 5, 1993

ISBN: 0-671-67770-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1993

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NIGHT

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

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INTO THE WILD

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)

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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