Uh oh! Point of view, scenic construction, status life symbolism, I thought I was reading a book about the NJ by Tom Wolfe but whaddaya know, I wake up chewing gum in English 202 listening to William Phillips talk about Henry James, it's always Henry James in English 202. . . . NOOOooo!!!! ARgh! +%&$!!! Tom Wolfe!**! Ecch! PINCH MY TEETH! That's what happens, folks, when NJs start thinking they're Men of Letters like the dirty folk from Partisan Review or The Village Voice ("No, stupid! That's not Toilet Paper! Pastafazouli!), oh, you know, every place but Esquire, Playboy, Rolling Stone. . . . The gang's all here, from Georgie (Plimpton, you silly), to Norman to Joanie (Di-di-didion) to Truman (no last name needed here, ha ha ha Margaret), Gay Talese, Hunter Thompson, Rex Reed, even "Adam Smith," ain't that a kick in the head? Ha ha ha. And what does it matter that many of the selections are those authors' least distinguished work, or first published piece, or that the place of publication is often obscurely unmentioned (trouble with releases, Honest Tom?), I mean, it's the history of the New Journalism, hottest thing in lit since the Great American Novel Contest, or Balzac (Homer maybe?), and natcherly you can only expect us to get a little exclusive about it, put on a couple airs, lecture pompously (I'm entitled to it, creep) in my shiny white suit, 'scuse me, gotta go look in the mirror a sec, see myself in my macho all-American hubristic white whiny costume, gotta warm up in the dressing room, you know the big NJ contest, see you 'roun. . . .
Pub Date: June 6, 1973
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1973
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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