An unrelentingly shallow biography of the decathlete and physician who founded the Gay Games, incorporating extensive chunks of Waddell's diary from the last five years of his life. The prolific Schaap (Steinbrenner!, 1982, etc.) interviewed Waddell at length before his death from AIDS in 1987. The result, after an unexplained nine-year delay, is in essence an uncritical third-person autobiography. Waddell was born Tom Flubacher in New Jersey in 1937. His unhappy family disintegrated when he was young, and by his mid-teens he had moved in with a supportive couple whose name he took. A lousy student, Waddell squeaked his way through college on an athletic scholarship and went on to medical school while competing in track and field events. In 1966 he was drafted; to avoid Vietnam, Waddell registered as a conscientious objector, even demonstrating against the war. In the 1968 Olympics he finished sixth in the decathlon. His athletic career waned, but he pursued adventurous medical postings (i.e., accompanying Saudi royalty as a medical adviser on gambling junkets). Always aware of his homosexual leaning, Waddell came fully to terms with his sexuality in the 1970s, and People featured him and a lover in its ``Couples'' section in 1977. The Gay Games, Waddell's brainchild, were inaugurated in 1982, essentially to show that gay men and lesbians are normal because they can compete in sports as successfully as straight people; Schaap doesn't address criticisms of this fragile logic. Waddell fathered a child with a lesbian friend in 1983; his last years were occupied with his daughter, his declining health, and a protracted legal battle against the US Olympic Committee, which refused to let Waddell call his games the Gay Olympics. A complex character—compassionate, noble, but deeply troubled—sometimes peeks out, but Schaap's gee- whiz prose is as unsubtle as Waddell's diary entries addressed to his infant daughter. (Photos, not seen)
Pub Date: June 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-394-57223-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1996
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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