“We may come at last,” Yeats once remarked, “to think that all knowledge is biography.” Foster’s knowing, richly detailed...
Eminent Irish historian meets eminent Irish poet, continuing the massive biography begun nearly seven years ago.
Foster (History/Oxford Univ.; The Irish Story, 2002, etc.) carries on with a number of themes that occupied The Apprentice Mage (1997): William Butler Yeats’s long infatuation with the Celtic bohemian Maud Gonne, his infatuations with many other women, his researches in the psychic and paranormal, and, above all, his refusal to be easily categorized in either poetry or politics, his twin vocations. Foster begins with Yeats in turning-point 1915, when he turned 50 and was beginning to tire of life in wartime London, writing of England’s war with Germany, “It is merely the most expensive outbreak of insolence and stupidity the world has ever seen, and I give it as little of my thought as I can.” Things were no quieter in Ireland, where, soon afterward, the Easter Uprising—the subject of some of Yeats’s most memorable poems—broke out, followed by civil war and the difficult birth of the Irish Free State. Back home, Yeats positioned himself, Foster shows, not quite on the sidelines, but certainly at some distance from the sloganeers on either side, and he did not please his nominal fellow nationalists (“whose strict Sinn Féin platitudes,” Foster sniffs, “seem[ed] bathetically ill attuned to the necessities of modern compromise”) by insisting that true Irish culture owed as much to Anglo-Norman as Celtic influences. Tweaking simpler-minded politics in his “Crazy Jane” poems, Yeats goes on, in Foster’s account, to poke about in less attractive corners of politics, expressing occasional admiration for the totalitarians across the sea; but mostly, having won the Nobel Prize, he retreats, slowly, into revered and grand-old-man-of-poetry status, getting himself in more trouble on the homefront than in the public sphere. Foster wisely lets Yeats’s poetry speak for itself, though he ably deconstructs the bard’s songs in light of contemporary events, and he provides an extraordinarily thorough context for scholars of a more strictly literary bent—and all in entirely readable, deeply nuanced fashion.
“We may come at last,” Yeats once remarked, “to think that all knowledge is biography.” Foster’s knowing, richly detailed investigation is a remarkable achievement, essential to serious students of Yeats’s life and work.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-19-818465-4
Page Count: 832
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2003
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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