Marina Tsvetaeva (1882-1941) is the least read of the four great modern Russian poets (Pasternak, Akhmatova, Mandelstam), her poems (translated here by Peter Norman) and fine theoretical prose as subject to drowning in the tempestuous waves of her life-history as anything else she held closest to her. Tsvetaeva knew everyone, loved everyone, idealized everyone (though married to poet Sergei Efron, her affairs were bisexual, transcontinental, discretionless)—and suffered poverty and scorn in the service of her genius. Lacking the outward gravitas of her peer poets, she was scandal incarnate—she makes George Sand seem like Emily Dickinson- -but with that quality came a gift for essentialism that in this poetic century perhaps is matched only by Rilke's; her love affairs were more acts of insanely pure idealization than genuine passions for an other. She lived out of Russia during much of the Twenties and Thirties; and then, against her better sense, went back—only to have her long-suffering, saintly husband and daughter promptly arrested and sent to perish in the gulag. Somehow, though, Tsvetaeva managed to continue with her art until her saddest of ends: a penniless suicide as the German Army approached. Schweitzer, a Mayakovsky archivist in Moscow before emigrating in 1978, has not a little of her subject's verve, valor, and hardheadedness: She scoffs, dismisses, clucks, repeats, wearies, worries, and wears down: that a nobody's-fool Russian woman of impossible stamina wrote this book would be guessable blind. But the book is chiefly indispensable for the whole picture of modern Russian literature it encompasses—analytical, social, and sexual. Sometimes a slog, but worth it. (Illustrations)
Pub Date: June 15, 1993
ISBN: 0-374-27945-4
Page Count: 488
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1993
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
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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