The author’s detractors will likely find fault, but this is a fitting cap to a sui generis career, equally satisfying in...
The first memoir from the idiosyncratic novelist, who claims that if “it doesn’t read like a normal memoir, that may be because I haven’t exactly led what most normal people would consider a normal life.”
Indeed. The narrative—comprised of a series of vignettes from various points in the author’s eventful life and appropriately spiked with deliciously mischievous language and philosophical musings—may be “somewhat subject to the effects of mnemonic erosion,” but it is piquant and intriguing nonetheless. In roughly chronological order, Robbins (B Is for Beer, 2009, etc.) covers his childhood in Blowing Rock, N.C.; his move to and residence in Richmond, Va., in which he discovered and thrived in the one enclave in town not considered ultraconservative; his time at Hargrave Military Academy and two years at Washington and Lee; his experiences in the Air Force as a meteorologist in Korea and at Strategic Air Command in Nebraska; his post at the Richmond Times-Dispatch; his move to Seattle and eventual assumption of the position of arts critic at the Seattle Times; and his brush with the FBI, who thought he might have been the Unabomber. As can be expected from Robbins, each short section is subject to digressions and thoughtful pauses, only a few of which linger a bit too long. His chronicle of the writing and publication of Another Roadside Attraction (1971) does not occur until nearly halfway through the book, and the author glides through the rest of his oeuvre (Still Life with Woodpecker, Jitterbug Perfume et al.) with less reflection. Most readers, even die-hard Robbins fans, won’t mind, however. They will enjoy this peek into the intelligently goofy and always fertile mind of this inventive writer, who riffs on everything from women and drugs to the publishing industry, conceptions of spirituality and the countless culinary wonders of kimchi.
The author’s detractors will likely find fault, but this is a fitting cap to a sui generis career, equally satisfying in short installments or read straight through.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-226740-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2014
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A miscellany of paternal pride (and frustration) darkened by the author’s increasing realizations of his mortality.
Ruminations and reminiscences of an author—now in his 70s—about fatherhood, writing, and death.
O’Brien (July, July, 2002, etc.), who achieved considerable literary fame with both Going After Cacciato (1978) and The Things They Carried (1990), returns with an eclectic assembly of pieces that grow increasingly valedictory as the idea of mortality creeps in. (The title comes from the author’s uncertainty about his ability to assemble these pieces in a single volume.) He begins and ends with a letter: The initial one is to his first son (from 2003); the terminal one, to his two sons, both of whom are now teens (the present). Throughout the book, there are a number of recurring sections: “Home School” (lessons for his sons to accomplish), “The Magic Show” (about his long interest in magic), and “Pride” (about his feelings for his sons’ accomplishments). O’Brien also writes often about his own father. One literary figure emerges as almost a member of the family: Ernest Hemingway. The author loves Hemingway’s work (except when he doesn’t) and often gives his sons some of Papa’s most celebrated stories to read and think and write about. Near the end is a kind of stand-alone essay about Hemingway’s writings about war and death, which O’Brien realizes is Hemingway’s real subject. Other celebrated literary figures pop up in the text, including Elizabeth Bishop, Andrew Marvell, George Orwell, and Flannery O’Connor. Although O’Brien’s strong anti-war feelings are prominent throughout, his principal interest is fatherhood—specifically, at becoming a father later in his life and realizing that he will miss so much of his sons’ lives. He includes touching and amusing stories about his toddler sons, about the sadness he felt when his older son became a teen and began to distance himself, and about his anguish when his sons failed at something.
A miscellany of paternal pride (and frustration) darkened by the author’s increasing realizations of his mortality.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-618-03970-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
What we've all been awaiting: the first of Hemingway's posthumous works he began in 1958 and finished in 1960. This is a memoir of his expatriate days in the twenties, and MacLeish's little poem about the young man with the panther good looks who whittled a style for his times in the sawmill attic in Paris comes to life here. What also comes to light is the "inside story," or the very personal revelations, parts of whicy may become a cause scandale. Not only is the Fitzgerald portrait ungenerous, but the disclosures of his sexual difficulties with Zelda are embarrassing. Miss Stein is also victimized, and there are allusions to puzzling perversities. Pound, Ford, Eliot, Lewis and Joyce are around and they are treated with affection, or affectionate malice. The best passages are the descriptive ones— fine writing with all the supple surety of Sun— of bookstalls, cafes, streets, the Seine, race tracks, and travel. And of course there's Hemingway on his wife Hadley, and Hemingway on Hemingway..... Mary McCarthy's famous attack on Salinger scored him for following Papa's special club of OK people (like him) versus the "others" (unlike him). The memoir has something of that snobbery and certain people may go after it accordingly. Still, whatever the indiscretions, it is an important work, a literary source from a master. There can be little doubt of its interest and attraction for many as a reprise of a now legendary time when Hemingway was young and happy and "invulnerable," and a place— well, "There is never any ending to Paris.
Pub Date: May 5, 1964
ISBN: 0684833638
Page Count: 207
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1964
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