Antonia White (1899-1980), author of four autobiographical novels (Frost in May, 1933, etc.) and unlikely heroine of the feminist movement, described the period when these diaries begin as ``chaos, misery, breakdown, analysis, divorce''—although the entries conclude with one of the happiest periods of her life. Chitty (That Singular Person Called Lear, 1988, etc.), her daughter, on whose defects White often dwelt, is the unflinching editor of what seems almost an act of contrition for her mother. Certified insane at age 22, White found refuge from madness in analysis, love affairs, and religion, returning to her Catholic faith during a lesbian affair and finding comfort in it for the rest of her life. The diaries served as a confidante to which White could recite inventories of her moods, obsessions, and failures; anatomies of characters and relationships; and confessions of her sloth, jealousy, and inability to love or to inspire love in men, women, and even her children. As revealed here, Lydall, the less problematic child, entitled her memoir of her mother Nothing to Forgive; Susan, the older and illegitimate child, also suffered a nervous collapse at age 22, attempted suicide, and, after briefly finding refuge with her mother, rejected her, excluding her from her marriage and her own children, refusing to communicate for five torturous years. White's pain and isolation were intensified by the betrayal of her analyst, who married her ex-husband, and complicated by several people who plagued her—one a fan who sent money and several letters a day before turning on her, another an actress who successfully sued her for libel because of an accidental similarity to a fictional character. The diary does end on an upbeat note: ``Think about Work, my good woman, not fancy whims.'' Fascinating not for what it reveals about White's world (which she shared with Virginia Woolf and Graham Greene, who appears briefly), but for the guileless revelations of a troubled if functioning author inventing her life. (Eight pages of b&w photos- -not seen.)
Pub Date: June 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-670-83970-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1992
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
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
SEEN & HEARD
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