Allen's 38th book, by his reckoning, and perhaps his best. This is the history of Allen's ``professional adventures in broadcasting, and not a revelation of my experiences as pianist, composer, author, public citizen, lover, husband or father.'' With all this, according to Allen, covered elsewhere, what's left? But sticking simply to his various shows as he faced the radio mike or TV camera allows Allen to skim the cream from 50 years of lightweight chat and comedy routines and keep his reminiscences under tight rein while moving at a gallop. With material groomed to shine, he often comes off better here than he does while wryly improvising on TV. Allen's opening is hilarious, as he recalls feeding fake commercials into the hands of unwitting announcers who find themselves speaking rotund babble on live air. Also great fun is his baldfaced stupidity as a teenager when he, his mother, and his aunt are playing cards in their Chicago hotel room and hear from a CBS radio announcer that Mars has invaded the Earth (``Gosh!'' Allen cries)—they head instantly for church and some heavy prayer, with stunned Allen still crying ``Gosh!'' We follow him through his early days as a flummoxing TV sportscaster for wrestling matches (``Leone now has his kelman frammised over the arm of Hayes' kronkheit...Ladies and gentlemen, the zime is going absolutely mctavish!''). Bored by the idea of being a deejay on his Breaking the Records radio show, Allen breaks old records rather than play them and gets a huge audience by talking without music. When his guest Doris Day fails to show up, he interviews the audience instead and invents the talk show. Allen's original Tonight Show format was much broader than today's and even took on the Mafia—here, he tells of happy/sad moments with Errol Flynn and Jack Kerouac. Better than nostalgia, sometimes serious, and often genuinely funny.
Pub Date: July 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-942637-55-0
Page Count: 299
Publisher: Barricade
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1992
The memoir of George Dawson, who learned to read when he was 98, places his life in the context of the entire 20th century in this inspiring, yet ultimately blighted, biography. Dawson begins his story with an emotional bang: his account of witnessing the lynching of a young African-American man falsely accused of rape. America’s racial caste system and his illiteracy emerge as the two biggest obstacles in Dawson’s life, but a full view of the man overcoming the obstacles remains oddly hidden. Travels to Ohio, Canada, and Mexico reveal little beyond Dawson’s restlessness, since nothing much happens to him during these wanderings. Similarly, the diverse activities he finds himself engaging in—bootlegging in St. Louis, breaking horses, attending cockfights—never really advance the reader’s understanding of the man. He calls himself a “ladies’ man” and hints at a score of exciting stories, but then describes only his decorous marriage. Despite the personal nature of this memoir, Dawson remains a strangely aloof figure, never quite inviting the reader to enter his world. In contrast to Dawson’s diffidence, however, Glaubman’s overbearing presence, as he repeatedly parades himself out to converse with Dawson, stifles any momentum the memoir might develop. Almost every chapter begins with Glaubman presenting Dawson with a newspaper clipping or historical fact and asking him to comment on it, despite the fact that Dawson often does not remember or never knew about the event in question. Exasperated readers may wonder whether Dawson’s life and his accomplishments, his passion for learning despite daunting obstacles, is the tale at hand, or whether the real issue is his recollections of Archduke Ferdinand. Dawson’s achievements are impressive and potentially exalting, but the gee-whiz nature of the tale degrades it to the status of yet another bowl of chicken soup for the soul, with a narrative frame as clunky as an old bone.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-50396-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1999
That sense of joy infuses these gentle essays. “Old age sits in a chair,” writes Hall, “writing a little and diminishing.”...
The writing life at age 85.
In this collection of 14 autobiographical essays, former U.S. Poet Laureate Hall (Christmas at Eagle Pond, 2012, etc.) reflects on aging, death, the craft of writing and his beloved landscape of New Hampshire. Debilitated by health problems that have affected his balance and ability to walk, the author sees his life physically compromised, and “the days have narrowed as they must. I live on one floor eating frozen dinners.” He waits for the mail; a physical therapist visits twice a week; and an assistant patiently attends to typing, computer searches and money matters. “In the past I was often advised to live in the moment,” he recalls. “Now what else can I do? Days are the same, generic and speedy….” Happily, he is still able to write, although not poetry. “As I grew older,” he writes, “poetry abandoned me….For a male poet, imagination and tongue-sweetness require a blast of hormones.” Writing in longhand, Hall revels in revising, a process that can entail more than 80 drafts. “Because of multiple drafts I have been accused of self-discipline. Really I am self-indulgent, I cherish revising so much.” These essays circle back on a few memories: the illness and death of his wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, which sent him into the depths of grief; childhood recollections of his visits to his grandparents’ New Hampshire farm, where he helped his grandfather with haying; grateful portraits of the four women who tend to him: his physical therapist, assistant, housekeeper and companion; and giving up tenure “for forty joyous years of freelance writing.”
That sense of joy infuses these gentle essays. “Old age sits in a chair,” writes Hall, “writing a little and diminishing.” For the author, writing has been, and continues to be, his passionate revenge against diminishing.Pub Date: Dec. 2, 2014
ISBN: 978-0544287044
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2014
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