A savvy writer with a quick wit, Lowe invites readers into his world with easy charm and disarming frankness.
Actor Lowe follows up his Stories I Only Tell My Friends (2011) with a potpourri of observations and reflections about youthful indiscretions, celebrity tidbits, marriage and fatherhood, addiction and the acting life.
In his Brat Pack days, the author’s good looks cast him as a leading man and, at the same time, an underrated actor. Readers will learn there’s more to him: his love of the craft; seriousness in steering his acting, writing and producing career; dedication to his wife and sons; and a keen self-awareness. He readily admits his flaws—e.g., self-centered tendencies (“[Parks and Recreation co-star] Rashida Jones claims that I am what she likes to call a benevolent narcissist”) and emotional aloofness. Given the latter, it’s no surprise that his best writing comes in astute observations of the world he inhabits rather than through introspection, which comes off as a bit forced. The strongest material demystifies the process of developing projects for TV and film or choosing and preparing for roles. Lowe approaches his work with an adventurous spirit and an eye toward improvement, and he notes how he often chooses more challenging characters rather than leading roles. Lowe obviously enjoys pointing out the absurdities of show business, as when he conjures up a hilarious conversation between an agent/manager and his client that captures the duplicitous nature of the game. Tender essays about his family show a more vulnerable side to the actor. He writes of losing it after sending his oldest son off to college, teaching the youngest boy how to stand up to a bully on the baseball field, and his glowing admiration for his wife. Readers won’t soon forget his most fearless essay, which recounts a raw, heartbreaking experience from his days in rehab for his alcohol addiction.
A savvy writer with a quick wit, Lowe invites readers into his world with easy charm and disarming frankness.Pub Date: April 8, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4516-8571-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
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.
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
SEEN & HEARD
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