Author and counterculture leader Kesey stages a mock trial of the spirit of Neal Cassady—hero of Jack Kerouac's On the Road and "the fastest man alive"—defending him with loving reportage, fragments of verbatim transcripts, and scads of photos (153 color, 256 b&w—some seen) of the Merry Pranksters and their 1964 voyage across America in a psychedelically painted bus called "Further." "Ease off. Csshhh. . .New York! Somewhere north. Dig the semi passing," says Cassady here in an amazing stream-of-consciousness monologue that trips from speeding trucks to the laws of time and motion ("In every action or thing like pshhoooo! there's a weak spot. Now the weak spot is always attacked by the highest of the next lower forces. Like second dimensional, third dimensional, fourth dimensional. . ."). The monologue never really stops from La Honda, Cal., to N.Y.C., and it's what inspired Tom Wolfe to celebrate Cassady in The Electric Keel. Aid Acid Test as a speed-demon shaman to the nation's young. Creating an imaginary courtroom and employing screenplay format (he wrote an early version of this work as a screenplay in 1978), Kesey scrutinizes the character of the jittery, lecherous Cassady. Did he or did he not seduce and bedevil the young actress who came to be called "Stark Naked"? Calling to the stand such stalwart fellow travelers as Gretch the Slime Queen, Zonker, and Dr, Knot, Kesey exonerates "Cowboy Neal" and celebrates the whole strange trip as powerful medicine for a nation stagnating behind a "screen" of habit: "The situation was bound to become—still might become terminal, unless that cancerous screen is blasted away, like scales from the eye, tartar from the tooth. . ." A psychedelic valentine for the Nineties: a wacky and slight but sweet and wistful review of the best-known trip of the Sixties.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1990
ISBN: 0670831743
Page Count: 230
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1990
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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