Don't look to these unauthorized ``confessions'' by three sisters and former Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders for a history or exposÇ of the famed cheerleading corps. It tells almost nothing about the organization but is, instead, a shallow, sticky paean to overweening glamour and materialism. Suzette made the 36-woman squad in 1978, followed a year later by Stephanie (who, despite the triumvirate byline, narrates the ``story''). Both were retired by 1982. Third sister Sheri caught on as an alternate in 1985 but quit before the end of the season. Their mother, who dominates the first half of the book, was in hot pursuit of ``every little girl's dream,'' strictly coordinating her daughters' ``look,'' dating, and behavior: They were never to wear jeans or speak loudly. (``A low-class gutter sow'' is loud; a ``real lady...is as quiet...as a rose.'') Stephanie's most traumatic experience as a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader was, as she tells it, hearing of director Suzanne Mitchell's displeasure with her hairdo: ``I was very confused...I would look in the mirror for hours and cry. I hated myself.'' The payoff for ``the Rockettes of football'' certainly wasn't the $15 per game or even the personal appearances, TV movies, and game shows—for which the girls most often were not paid; it was, instead, a privilege just to wear the blue hot pants and bask in the Texas spotlight, to be treated ``like a geisha'' and end up ``being supported by rich men.'' Gushing descriptions of ``wholesome'' sexuality, coyote fur coats, and snakeskin boots; facile emotional crises and Fantasy Island pink/sunset romances with handsome oilmen; plus a lack of substantive information about the subject—all make for a relentlessly vacuous exercise. (Sixteen pages of photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Sept. 27, 1991
ISBN: 0-312-06334-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1991
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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