A wild, entertaining ride that could have been a little shorter.
Former drug smuggler, TV writer, and magazine contributor Stratton (Altered States of America: Outlaws and Icons, Hitmakers and Hitmen, 2006, etc.) revels in his glory days in the drug trade and his eventual downfall at the hands of a determined government agent.
The author—a former publisher of High Times and consultant for HBO’s prison series Oz—is determined to showcase the romantic side of drug smuggling, admit that there is still an ugliness to it, and come out the hero of his own man-against-the-world narrative, all with a dose of humor and keeping the ultimate cool. He isn’t entirely successful, but the attempt results in a compulsively interesting story with the requisite drama and suspense that will keep the pages turning. From the beginning, Stratton frames the story as the ongoing battle between himself and Drug Enforcement Administration agent Bernard Wolfshein, who comes across as calm, confident, and a little obsessed with Stratton. In turn, the author portrays himself as cleverer, admittedly less confident, and at least equally obsessed with Wolfshein. Much of the humor is wrapped up in this cat-and-mouse chase, where Wolfshein always seems one step ahead and still doesn’t get his man. In the scenes featuring both men, Stratton’s background in TV writing is apparent; Wolfshein’s dialogue always sounds a bit like an episode of Law and Order. Stratton and his crew pulled off a surprising number of impressive smuggles while Wolfshein tried to pin them down, and Stratton throws in a lot of extra color by way of lavish spending, sex, and glittering parties that make heads spin. Near misses abound and offer great fun for readers, even though it’s obvious from the start that Stratton won’t stay free for long. Eventually, heavy hints and one too many existential rants become tiresome.
A wild, entertaining ride that could have been a little shorter.Pub Date: April 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62872-668-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Both entertaining and grippingly introspective, Haddish’s take-no-prisoners tale is a testament to self-will and how humor...
The stand-up comedian and actress opens up about her past and the perils of being a woman in comedy.
In her uncensored and often hilarious debut memoir, Haddish reveals pivotal events from her personal life that helped propel her toward the stage. “I got into the entertainment business so I could feel accepted,” she writes. “And loved. And safe.” After learning about the trials of her early years, readers will appreciate how trying to make a roomful of strangers laugh could prove easier than negotiating the minefield of the author’s home life. Though somewhat dismissive of her uncanny ability to rise above adversity, Haddish provides a colloquially written rags-to-riches story that is both impressive and harrowing. Abandoned by her father at age 3 and forced to live with her grandmother at 8, after her mother was in a devastating car accident that caused permanent brain damage, Haddish spent years taking care of her younger siblings or being abused while in foster care. She turned to humor as a defense mechanism, getting her comedic start as a teen working as an “energy producer” at bar mitzvahs around Los Angeles. Once her grandmother learned she would no longer receive financial support for caring for her granddaughter, she turned Haddish out, causing her to become homeless at 18. At 21, the author’s stepfather told her that not only was he responsible for the accident that had forever changed her mother, but that it had been meant to kill her and all her siblings so he could cash in on the life insurance. After learning this, Haddish says she started dating policemen. “It’s always good to have police friends,” she writes, “especially black police, because there aren’t a lot of them.” The author’s unrelenting positivity and openness about how insecurities about her own self-worth led to poor decisions later in life offer important lessons and hope for others seemingly trapped in toxic relationships.
Both entertaining and grippingly introspective, Haddish’s take-no-prisoners tale is a testament to self-will and how humor can save your life.Pub Date: Dec. 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5011-8182-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
He came home eventually, to do the “Survivor Shuffle” and miss Vietnam acutely, and he writes with a fierce, tight...
“Vietnam, man. Bomb ’em and feed ’em, bomb ’em and feed ’em”—a chopper pilot summarized the war strategy for Herr.
And with Herr’s belated volume of unfiled dispatches from the front, the awareness grows that this war—like no other since WWI—continues to produce a rich lode of literature, part litany, part exorcism, part macabre nostalgia. Like his buddies Scan Flynn and Dana Stone—later MIA in Cambodia—Herr was a correspondent with a license to see more than just a single mud hole. Using the “Airmobility” of the helicopters, he hopscotched the country from Hue to Danang to the DMZ to Saigon (“the subtle city war inside the war” where corruption stank like musk oil). He was at Hue during the battle that reduced the old Imperial capital to rubble, at Khe Sanh when the grunts’ expectations of another Alamo were running high. Between mortar shells and body bags he reflected on the mysterious smiles of the blank-eyed soldiers, smiles that said “I’ll tell you why I’m smiling, but it will make you crazy.” And Herr, who is full of twisted, hidden ironies, is all wrapped up in the craziness of the war, enthralled by the limitless “variety of deaths and mutilations the war offered,” and by the awful “cheer-crazed” language of the official communiques which always reported spirits high, weather fine. He knew, and his buddies knew, that this kind of reportage was “psychotic vaudeville”—though not for a moment would he deny the harsh glamour of being a working war correspondent.
He came home eventually, to do the “Survivor Shuffle” and miss Vietnam acutely, and he writes with a fierce, tight insistence that never lets go.Pub Date: Nov. 8, 1977
ISBN: 0679735259
Page Count: 276
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1977
BOOK REVIEW
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