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SIMON & GARFUNKEL

Name: SIMON & GARFUNKEL
Author: Victoria Kingston
ISBN: 0-88064-193-2

THE BIOGRAPHY

by Victoria Kingston ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 29, 1998

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With childlike adoration and prose to match, a British radio host and newspaper columnist has a go at Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel’s intertwined careers. The two singers were born in 1941 and grew up together in Queens, New York. Billed as Tom and Jerry, they had a minor hit (—Hey Schoolgirl—) at age 16; after college, as themselves, Simon and Garfunkel cut an indifferently received album in 1964. Simon then went off to England for a few months, where he played the folk circuit and released a solo album; this period receives exhaustive comment here. When an overlooked song, —The Sound of Silence,— started getting airplay half a year after its release, Simon and Garfunkel suddenly became big stars, which they remained until they broke up in 1970. Nearly all their songs were Simon originals, and Kingston describes them with inadvertently comical doggedness. Sample commentary, on —Keep the Customer Satisfied—: —As he wails, —I—m so tired,— we—re aware that, at the same time, Paul Simon was indeed tired.— While the author spoke to a number of good sources, including Garfunkel, her account is heavily weighted with seldom revelatory quotes from previously published interviews. Kingston scrupulously allots the same tenderly useless song-by-song attention to both the non-songwriting Garfunkel’s forgettable solo albums and Simon’s sophisticated, self-penned, hit-packed oeuvre. By the same token, One Trick Pony, the abysmal film Simon wrote and starred in, is treated as politely as Garfunkel’s entirely more reputable acting credits, Catch-22, Carnal Knowledge, and Bad Timing. Kingston trails the pair through their initially triumphant early ’80s reunion concerts and the sessions for the intended Simon and Garfunkel album that became a Simon solo project when the reunion fizzled. Why did that happen? As throughout, the author’s worshipful distance combines with both of her subjects— admirable disdain for airing dirty laundry to produce only the most glancing insights. (8 pages b&w photos, not seen)

Pub Date: May 29, 1998

ISBN: 0-88064-193-2

Page Count: 320

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1998

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS & CELEBRITY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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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.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)