A balanced portrait of the muckraking newsman, and an excursion into American intellectual history and journalism.
The first full-scale biography in a generation of the great journalist, editor, and social critic (1880–1956), extending and in some ways supplanting the ones that have come before it.
Time was when H.L. Mencken’s reporting was the standard against which other journalists measured their own work, with the result that American newspapers of the 1920s and ’30s were full of second- and third-rate imitators of the master. That time has long passed, but New York Times contributor Teachout (City Limits, 1991), editor of the 1995 anthology A Second Mencken Chrestomathy, finds plenty of reasons to suggest that a Mencken revival is long overdue. What thinking person, after all, can deny Mencken’s scathing assessment of the still ascendant “Puritan scheme of things, with its gross and nauseating hypocrisies, its idiotic theologies, its moral obsessions”? What student of contemporary politics would not find a sympathetic guide in a writer whose “sneers and objurations have been reserved exclusively for braggarts and mountebanks, quacks and swindlers, fools and knaves”? Good stuff, indeed, but, as Teachout bravely admits, there are as many reasons to condemn Mencken as to praise him. He subscribed all his life to a suburban brand of anti-Semitism, once describing a contributor to his American Mercury magazine, for instance, as “a Jew . . . of the better sort” and writing to an interviewer, “I don’t like religious Jews” (mind you, he added, “I don’t like religious Catholics and Protestants”). He overlooked the excesses of the Nazi regime until well into WWII, perhaps out of misguided loyalty to his German ancestors. Still, well-placed criticism aside, Teachout offers a portrait of Mencken that emphasizes his extraordinary productivity—he wrote 19 books, thousands of articles, essays, and reviews, and perhaps 100,000 letters while covering national politics for daily newspapers and editing two magazines—and his contributions to journalism and American letters alike.
A balanced portrait of the muckraking newsman, and an excursion into American intellectual history and journalism.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2002
ISBN: 0-06-050528-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2002
An intriguing look at an iconoclast’s cultural accomplishments.
Beloved, controversial performer discusses fame and the deeper meanings of his life.
Common, subject of Fox News’ ire following his White House poetry recitation, has long been acclaimed as a thoughtful and deft hip-hop artist. In his memoir—co-authored by Bradley (Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop, 2009, etc.)—he suggests great consciousness of the cultural legacy he carries: “Chicago blackness gave me understanding, awareness, street sense, and a rhythm. I learned the way that soulful people move, act, and talk.” He portrays himself as an openhearted, curious kid, trying to understand the tumult of Chicago’s African-American South Side. Obsessed with girls from an early age, he would go to the city’s museums to meet them. At the same time, he was rhyming in private, and he gave up basketball in high school to concentrate on rap, which he saw as similarly competitive. Common writes frankly about his youthful involvement with gang culture, portrayed as an inevitable rite of passage that became increasingly violent: “Crack hit the South Side of Chicago like a balled up fist.” Varied influences—his mother, friends, artistic ambitions—steered him away from it and toward a more “conscious” existence. By 1989, his early demos as Common Sense were drawing industry attention, and he dropped out of college to pursue this calling, over his mother’s objections. Much of what follows is a funny, honest showbiz narrative, moving from hip-hop to film acting. Interestingly, each chapter begins with a “letter” to someone significant in his life: e.g., his mother and father (early chapters discuss their tumultuous relationship), Emmett Till, former girlfriend Erykah Badu and collaborator Kanye West. Additionally, his mother offers occasional italicized counterpoint. As a memoir, the book succeeds based on Common’s candor, intelligence and charm, despite occasional artificial passages and broad platitudes, and he writes powerfully about his connection with President Obama.
An intriguing look at an iconoclast’s cultural accomplishments.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4516-2587-5
Page Count: -
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
At this rate, Tyson may write a multivolume memoir as he continues to struggle and survive.
An exhaustive—and exhausting—chronicle of the champ's boxing career and disastrous life.
Tyson was dealt an unforgiving hand as a child, raised in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn in a "horrific, tough and gruesome" environment populated by "loud, aggressive" people who "smelled like raw sewage.” A first-grade dropout with several break-ins under his belt by age 7, his formal education resumed when he was placed in juvenile detention at age 11, but the lesson he learned at home was to do absolutely anything to survive. Two years later, his career path was set when he met legendary boxing trainer Cus D'Amato. However, Tyson’s temperament never changed; if anything, it hardened when he took on the persona of Iron Mike, a merciless and savage fighter who became undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. By his own admission, he was an "arrogant sociopath" in and out of the ring, and he never reconciled his thuggish childhood with his adult self—nor did he try. He still partied with pimps, drug addicts and hustlers, and he was determined to feed all of his vices and fuel several drug addictions at the cost of his freedom (he recounts his well-documented incarcerations), sanity and children. Yet throughout this time, he remained a voracious reader, and he compares himself to Clovis and Charlemagne and references Camus, Sartre, Mao Zedong and Nietzsche's "Overman" in casual conversation. Tyson is a slumdog philosopher whose insatiable appetites have ruined his life many times over. He remains self-loathing and pitiable, and his tone throughout the book is sardonic, exasperated and indignant, his language consistently crude. The book, co-authored by Sloman (co-author: Makeup to Breakup: My Life In and Out of Kiss, 2012, etc.), reads like his journal; he updated it after reading the galleys and added "A Postscript to the Epilogue" as well.
At this rate, Tyson may write a multivolume memoir as he continues to struggle and survive.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-399-16128-5
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Blue Rider Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
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