Second, and weaker, bio of Elton John this season. Crimp and Burstein (Family Holiday, 1982) have also written bios (not reviewed) of Jackie and Joan Collins and of Caroline and Stephanie Rainier. Crimp/Burstein come in second to Philip Norman's Elton John (p. 38), which is longer, far denser in detail, richer with interviews, and boasts a thorough discography. Norman also writes better—not great, but better—and his length soaks you so deeply in John that the entertainer, despite his flaws, draws you in with considerable warmth. Aside from a double handful of interviews (none with John, whom Norman failed to land as well), Crimp and Burstein rely largely upon info from secondary sources. John himself can carry any bio, as his ebullient stage persona overrides his deep shyness, baldness, and often puffy face and his battles with alcohol, bulimia and fat. (A recent TV interview with David Frost found him trim as a greyhound, enjoying an ongoing sobriety in A.A.) Crimp and Burstein note that John, the issue of a broken home, has spent his life attempting to assuage his natural father, an archly stiff RAF flight-lieutenant, while enjoying close ties with his mother (with whom he discussed his first homosexual affair when it happened). John and his younger lyricist, Bernie Taupin, met while John was working at Dick James Music (then the Beatles' publishers) and then roomed together for 18 months while John hid out from a financÇe he did not want to marry. Garishly outrageous costumes and madcap glasses camouflaged his shyness during stage appearances, while his pounding musicality and high visibility drove his record sales higher than all others in the British empire. A late marriage failed, and going public about his bisexuality brought unexpected pain. Thinly done, though John makes it all easy reading.
Pub Date: April 1, 1992
ISBN: 1-55972-111-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Birch Lane Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1992
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 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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