In these revealing memoirs, reconstructed some 30 years after the accident that changed his life, Fiffer (co-author, with Morris Dees, of Hate on Trial: The Case Against America’s Most Dangerous Neo-Nazi, 1993, etc.) shows what it is like to be different and recounts his long struggle to accept that difference and become whole. In 1967, a wrestling fall fractured a vertebra in the high school senior’s neck, leaving him a helpless quadriplegic. Blessed with a devoted father with both the means and the influence to get him the best care then available, Fiffer also had good luck on his side: contrary to his doctors’ predictions, feeling and control gradually returned to some of his body. After months of physical therapy, he was able to begin his freshman year at Yale in 1968, no longer in a wheelchair but on crutches. Fiffer’s depiction of himself during these years is not especially flattering—he seems as shallow and self-obsessed as your average adolescent. Again, he is fortunate in having people around to set him right: a mother to jolt him out of unnecessary dependence and smart-alecky behavior, a rehab colleague to put his injuries in perspective, a fitness expert to push him past the physical limits he had begun to settle for. A persistent theme is his longing for and fears about sexual love. Happiness in this department is a long time coming, and Fiffer’s tales of one-night stands and unfulfilled affairs are poignant. In telling one reluctant young woman, “You may not be getting a dollar bill, but you’d be getting three quarters, two dimes, and a nickel,” he both recognizes his difference and asserts his wholeness. Happily, he is now married to a fellow writer and editor, a union that has produced books (Family: American Writers Remember Their Own, 1996, etc.) as well as children. A generally satisfying but hardly spellbinding example of the how-I-overcame-my-handicap genre.
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-684-85418-X
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1999
Bighearted, sobering, and humane.
A bookseller in Wigtown, Scotland, recounts a year in his life as a small-town dealer of secondhand books.
“The pleasure derived from handling books that have introduced something of cultural or scientific significance to the world is undeniably the greatest luxury that this business affords,” writes Bythell. In a diary that records his wry observations from behind the counter of his store, the author entertains readers with eccentric character portraits and stories of his life in the book trade. The colorful cast of characters includes bookshop regulars like Eric, the local orange-robed Buddhist; Captain, Bythell’s “accursed cat”; “Sandy the tattooed pagan”; and “Mole-Man,” a patron with a penchant for in-store “literary excavations.” Bythell’s employees are equally quirky. Nicky, the author’s one paid worker, is an opinionated Jehovah’s Witness who “consistently ignores my instructions” and criticizes her boss as “an impediment to the success of the business.” His volunteer employee, an Italian college student named Emanuela (whom the author nicknamed Granny due to her endless complaints about bodily aches), came to Wigtown to move beyond the world of study and “expand [her] knowledge.” Woven into stories about haggling with clients over prices or dealing with daily rounds of vague online customer requests—e.g., a query about a book from “around about 1951. Part of the story line is about a cart of apples being upset, that’s all I know”)—are more personal dramas, like the end of his marriage and the difficult realities of owning a store when “50 per cent [sic] of retail purchases are made online.” For Bythell, managing technical glitches, contending with low profit margins on Amazon, and worrying about the future of his business are all part of a day’s work. Irascibly droll and sometimes elegiac, this is an engaging account of bookstore life from the vanishing front lines of the brick-and-mortar retail industry.
Bighearted, sobering, and humane.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-56792-664-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Godine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
James Baldwin has come a long way since the days of Notes of a Native Son, when, in 1955, he wrote: "I love America more than any other country in the world; and exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually." Such bittersweet affairs are bound to turn sour. The first curdling came with The Fire Next Time, a moving memoir, yet shot through with rage and prophetic denunciations. It made Baldwin famous, indeed a celebrity, but it did little, in retrospect, to further his artistic reputation. Increasingly, it seems, he found it impossible to reconcile his private and public roles, his creative integrity and his position as spokesman for his race. Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone, for example, his last novel, proved to be little more than a propagandistic potboiler. Nor, alas, are things very much better in No Name In the Street, a brief, rather touchy and self-regarding survey of the awful events of the '60's — the deaths of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, the difficulties of the Black Panther Party, the abrasive and confused relationships between liberals and militants. True, Baldwin's old verve and Biblical raciness are once more heard in his voice; true, there are poignant moments and some surprisingly intimate details. But this chronicle of his "painful route back to engagement" never really comes to grips with history or the self. The revelatory impulse is present only in bits and pieces. Mostly one is confronted with psychological and ideological disingenuousness — and vanity as well.
Pub Date: May 26, 1972
ISBN: 0307275922
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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