A spirited biography of a complicated, combative, self-aggrandizing, and tormented man.
The gossip-filled, star-studded life of a writer who thrived on scandal.
Journalist, novelist, and TV and film producer Dominick Dunne (1925-2009) had two favorite pursuits: gossip—the more salacious the better—and star-watching. Sharing his subject’s fascination for celebrities behaving badly, TheWrap lead theater critic Hofler (Sexplosion: From Andy Warhol to A Clockwork Orange: How a Generation of Pop Rebels Broke All the Taboos, 2014, etc.) proves to be an apt and entertaining chronicler of Dunne’s eventful, turbulent, and often sorrowful life. As a child, Dunne was belittled by his father, who called him a sissy, regularly whipped him, and incited his fear that he really was a girl trapped in a boy’s body. “I never felt I belonged anywhere, even in my own family,” Dunne admitted later. Hofler highlights Dunne’s difficult relationship with his younger brother, writer John Gregory Dunne, husband of Joan Didion, from whom Dominick was estranged for many years. But Dunne’s family interests Hofler less than his cavorting with celebrities. On the set of Ash Wednesday (1973), which Dunne produced, Elizabeth Taylor was demanding and roaring drunk. She began with bloody marys in the morning (a 16-ounce glass of vodka with a splash of tomato juice) followed by wine at lunch and Jack Daniels all afternoon. At one party (the book is filled with them), the sexually insatiable Rudolf Nureyev sequestered himself in a cottage “and quickly inspired two dozen men to offer him their bodies.” A closeted homosexual, Dunne married, had two sons, and tried, unsuccessfully, to play the family man until his wife divorced him. One son violently resented him for many years; the other, more charitably, realized that his father’s “big mouth, getting hammered and telling stories out of school” ensured his popularity. Dunne’s reputation as a journalist soared when he covered sensational murder trials for Vanity Fair, including O.J. Simpson, Claus von Bülow, Phil Spector, Michael Skakel, and, not least, the man accused of murdering Dunne’s daughter.
A spirited biography of a complicated, combative, self-aggrandizing, and tormented man.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-299-31150-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Univ. of Wisconsin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
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
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