A pleasure to read, and just the thing to give to a disaffected teenager of a creative bent.
London-based visual artist Kambalu turns in a lively, funny memoir of growing up alternately poor and privileged in Africa.
Born in 1975 in Malawi, a time when the president-for-life’s government was turning ugly, Kambalu grew up under the tutelage of his father, a nattily dressed clinician who read Nietzsche on the toilet and dispensed philosophy along with pills. “We had called him the Jive Talker,” Kambalu writes, “not because he lied or talked jive, but because he liked to keep us awake on random nights and inflict his Nietzsche and personal affirmations on us in drunken performances, which he called jive, named after his favourite beer, Carlsberg Brown, which he also called jive.” The Jive Talker earned a good living, but the belt tightened when he was reassigned to a desk job away from the medicine cabinet. Meanwhile, young Kambalu, a superman in the making with an almost preternatural calmness about him—his birth name, after all, translates to “Don’t worry, be happy,” which disposed him to a liking for spiritual master Meher Baba—enjoyed a sentimental education with the Jive Talker before being carted off to prep school. There he added more whimsy to his arsenal, for, as he writes, “Most of [the] teachers were raving eccentrics but I guess you had to be out of your mind to teach in Malawi.” Convinced that he is owed a future as a rock star, Kambalu insinuated himself into a band, learned to play some guitar chords and crafted a fine sound, at least to his own satisfaction. Once old enough to do so, he crossed the border into a South Africa newly liberated from apartheid, where he attempted to convince record-company agents that he was the next big hit. As we leave him, returned to a finally democratic Malawi, we know that he won’t be his country’s answer to Michael Jackson, as he had hoped—but we also know that good things are going to happen to him.
A pleasure to read, and just the thing to give to a disaffected teenager of a creative bent.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4165-5931-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2008
Partly a biography of ``the most influential media baron of our time,'' more a critique of that baron's stewardship of the public interest, an ambitious assemblage that falls short of a strong narrative or full indictment. Newsday reporter Maier never received access to his little- known subject—S.I. ``Si'' Newhouse Jr., ruler of a chain of newspapers, of CondÇ Nast Publications (publisher of Vogue and Vanity Fair, among other magazines), and of the Random House book publishing empire—so his portrait is understandably sketchy. After tracing Newhouse's youthful unhappiness and professional meanderings, the author gets sidetracked with more interesting characters, such as Si's ``surrogate father,'' Alexander Liberman, longtime editorial director of CondÇ Nast. There, Newhouse blurred ``the distinction between editorial and advertising,'' Maier writes, sins later magnified at the reborn Vanity Fair and the newly acquired New Yorker. The narrative then turns to Si's friendship with the notorious Roy Cohn, who set in motion what seems to be Newhouse's most glaring ethical lapse: the Newhouse- owned Cleveland Plain Dealer succumbed to Mafia pressure to retract an investigative story on Teamster boss Jackie Presser. (Like most controversies in the book, this has been reported on in depth before.) Maier moves on to the complex tax maneuvering that saved oodles for Newhouse's Advance Publications, allowing him to acquire Random House in 1980. The author recounts how Newhouse's bottom- line mentality led to the controversial firings of veteran editors and sullied the company's reputation. Profiling editor Tina Brown (who agreed to interviews), he reveals that Si had planned to pull the plug on Brown's Vanity Fair until the famous Reagan cover turned the magazine's fortunes around. Si often drops out of the narrative when it veers into lengthy but not probing reports on the personalities and internal politics of Newhouse's empire, but Maier makes the worthy point that pundits have rarely examined the way ``the nation's largest private media company'' affects journalism and culture. In the public interest, surely. But will the public, outside the media world, be interested in this mediocre effort? (16 pages of photos, not seen) (First printing of 60,000)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-312-11481-8
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
A majestic biography of the man who shed his Ku Klux Klan robes to become one of the most influential and liberal justices in Supreme Court history. Newman (Law/New York Univ.) spent 26 years researching Black's life, and the result is a massive work of uncommon depth and grace. In subtle, luminous prose, he describes Black's merchant-class childhood in Clay County, Ala., haunted by his drunkard father; his prosperous years as ``Ego'' Black, the personal-injury lawyer whose courtroom oratory and theatrical cross-examination style brought him statewide fame and a position in the Klan; his two terms as Alabama's senator, during which he transformed himself from an intolerant populist into a power-brokering New Dealer, well-versed in ancient classics and modern politics; and his 34 years on the Supreme Court, championing the Bill of Rights and judicial restraint. Newman plainly reveres his subject, but he is clear-eyed and sometimes critical: He presents Black's various self- contradictory rationalizations for having served as KKK ``Kladd'' (whose job it is to induct new members into the Invisible Empire), then notes that Black ``never really grasped, or could admit, the genuine outrage that the Klan caused, and not only among Catholics, Jews and Negroes.'' Newman also criticizes Black's failure to grasp ``the profound meaning gathered within the Fourth Amendment's words'' (forbidding unreasonable searches and seizures). But he celebrates and illuminates the rest of the enormous body of Black's jurisprudence, which includes the ideas that the Bill of Rights applies in its entirety to the states and that the First Amendment right of free speech is ``absolute.'' The author is equally astute in analyzing Black's complex relationships with his depressive first wife, Josephine, the brilliant but libertine Justice William O. Douglas, and the devious and divisive Justice Felix Frankfurter. More than just a major contribution to Supreme Court history: a master's finely etched portrait of an American hero. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 10, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-43180-2
Page Count: 944
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
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