An engrossingly dramatic remembrance coupled with a keen history of the audiophile industry.
A writer recollects his journey from wayward youth to entrepreneurial accomplishment.
While growing up in California during the 1950s and ’60s, debut author McGowan was relentlessly mischievous. He was shot by an angry neighbor for trespassing, illegally established a college radio station, and spent two weeks in jail for 14 vehicular violations and failure to appear in court once summoned. The author ebulliently depicts his self-destructive youth in his memoir. He fled to Canada to avoid the draft, but the military ultimately caught up with him. While he was assured by a recruiter that accepting a longer stint as a radio specialist would prevent his deployment to Vietnam in 1969, that’s precisely where the Army intended to send him. After attempting to fake a mental breakdown, McGowan managed to sidestep Vietnam, landing in West Germany, where he worked as a DJ for the Armed Forces Network. He narrowly avoided going to prison for drug smuggling. Along the way, the author became infatuated with the European music scene and turned into the kind of person he would entrepreneurially serve for the rest of his life: an audiophile. He was eventually compelled to move back to the United States—he got into trouble with his commanding officer for concealing his long hair under a wig. He started his own company, PS Audio, which would eventually fail and then return to life decades later. McGowan’s story is cinematically dramatic—it always seems as if his destiny was either to make an indelible mark on the world or rot in prison. He unflinchingly offers a strong self-critique. A hubristic imprudence often torpedoed his ambitions: “What had made me believe I had the chops to build the world’s first polyphonic synthesizer? I had no education, no degree, nothing but chutzpah and a dream. I felt like a fraud.” The author’s tale is one of indefatigable persistence combined with real vision, stirringly conveyed in this remarkably readable memoir that also recounts the birth of a new consumer, the audiophile.
An engrossingly dramatic remembrance coupled with a keen history of the audiophile industry.Pub Date: June 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73358-330-5
Page Count: 362
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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