Here, Callow (Son and Lover, 1975) finds Walt Whitman to be mysterious, evasive, contradictory—a ``psychological oddity'' whose very confessions, revelations, and disclosures created a ``thicket of identities'' that further obscured his real self. Callow repeats the familiar story: the deprived boyhood, the ragged but devoted family, the constant moving about to earn a living, from teacher to journalist, mostly in New York; then the sudden bursting into poetry, into song. The author traces Whitman's self-education in the theater, opera, painting, astronomy, geology, and phrenology; his friendships with artists, with Emerson and Thoreau; his knowledge of Dickens and Carlyle—all to be assimilated into his poetry. In Whitman's protean personality, Callow sees myriad contradictions: between his being visionary and practical; between his proletarian tastes and elitist friends; between his love of crowds and of solitude; between his poetry and his journalism; between his affirmation of life and his preoccupation with death; between his obsession with cleanliness and the squalor in which he often lived; between his Quaker background and his celebration of sexuality, which Callow dismisses as a ``weird sexual fluidity.'' But, ironically, the major contradiction belongs to Callow himself: Although he sees Whitman as America's ``first genuine voice,'' he explains the poetry by quoting English writers (Blake, Shelley, D.H. Lawrence) whom Whitman didn't read, while quoting only sparingly from the poet's own candid and engaging letters. A simplified and derivative summary of the life and works, no substitute for the inspired biographies by Gay Wilson Allen (The Solitary Singer, 1985) and Justin Kaplan (Walt Whitman, 1980), or for Whitman himself, especially in the brilliantly edited selected letters (1990). (Eight pages of photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Sept. 11, 1992
ISBN: 0-929587-95-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Ivan Dee/Rowman & Littlefield
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
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
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