by Rob Lowe ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2011
Lowe writes, “I…genuinely like people.” His memoir will make readers believe him—and like him back.
Lowe presents a well-modulated actor’s memoir.
Whatever readers’ impressions of the actor, he understands them: “There is just no way anyone is likely to take a nineteen-year-old as pretty as I was seriously,” he writes. “Even I wouldn’t…People looked at me and made a judgment. It’s the way of the world. I do it too, sometimes.” Lowe doesn’t strain to be taken seriously here, though neither does he follow the kiss-and-tell conventions of the actor’s memoir nor the descent into hell of the recovering alcoholic’s. Instead, Lowe presents himself as a Midwestern guy very much aware that he won the genetic lottery; who became obsessed with acting at a young age as an escape from his dysfunctional family; enjoyed (mainly) the perks that came with his emergence as a teenage pinup; suffered career reversals that let him (and the reader) know just how little control an actor sometimes has; and ultimately found serenity as a devoted husband and father: “(I’m) like most American men. In love with my wife, living in a normal town, and blessed beyond imagining with two precious, beautiful, and inspiring babies.” The author goes into great detail about the making of The Outsiders, St. Elmo’s Fire, About Last Night and The West Wing, reinforcing the impression that his acting credits don’t come close to matching the level of his celebrity. Lowe is discreet about his romantic relationships and the extent of his partying with what would be dubbed the “Brat Pack,” opting instead for understatement (e.g., “Charlie Sheen is also one of a kind”) or general appreciation (“Jodie Foster should be any actor’s role model. She is certainly mine”). He treats the infamous sex tape that all but derailed his career so obliquely that the rare reader not aware of it will have little idea what he’s talking about.
Lowe writes, “I…genuinely like people.” His memoir will make readers believe him—and like him back.Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9329-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
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PROFILES
by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
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
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by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996
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
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