by Ronan Tynan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 8, 2002
In other hands, this litany of overachievement would have sounded like an exercise in self-congratulation, but Tynan treats...
A memoir by turns sedulous and spirited of the life of Irish tenor Tynan—a man, it turns out, of many parts other than his set of fine pipes.
“Had I not the cross to bear that I did, and I had I not made my own sort of pilgrimage in bearing it, who can say whether I’d ever have been rewarded with all I’ve been given?” That’s as close to boasting as Tynan comes in this account of his first 40 years. Born with focamelia, a bilateral deformity below the knee, young Ronan had to wear corrective braces, which squelched his competitive drive not a whit. He just kept doing the things that gave him pleasure: playing at sports, riding horses, singing with energy while walking in the fields of his family’s farm, pursuing those classes in school that interested him. When he was 20, he had his lower legs amputated; within a year, he was taking medals in international track and field competitions for the disabled. He went to medical school, then took up a general practice in the countryside, all the while finding solace in the joys of his music. His life was a gunning swirl of activity until, at age 32, he decided he must focus on one of his enthusiasms at a time. Music won, though not without further mishaps and detours. Tynan is wonderfully unimpressed by the fame that came to him as one of the Irish Tenors and quick to give credit to all those around him for their support, especially his brick of a father. He doesn’t invite our admiration for his pluck. Working hard at life was simply his style, he maintains; he made a good number of bad moves, same as everyone else.
In other hands, this litany of overachievement would have sounded like an exercise in self-congratulation, but Tynan treats his impressive—actually, astounding—life matter-of-factly.Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2002
ISBN: 0-7432-2291-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2001
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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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