In spite of the intent to charm, Trefusis's collection of observations, anecdotes, and aphorisms—hitherto published only in England, in 1952—reveals again that deeply disturbed and disturbing personality that appeared in Echo (1990), the autobiographical novel of the author's romance with Vita Sackville- West. ``Places make me happy,'' Trefusis complained, and ``people make me miserable''—which accounts for her annoying mannerism of personifying countries (``France is cerebral, Italy sensuous, Spain passionate'') and objectifying people (hair ``the color of potato chips''). To her complaint, her husband replied, ``Come off it!...[Stop] strutting about in front of the looking glass.'' Trefusis, the rich, restless, frivolous daughter of a royal mistress, records the first 50 years of the 20th century as merely a reflection in her personal mirror, with herself—her trivialities, opinions, and prejudices—at the center: During an interview with Mussolini, one of the most feared and powerful men in the world, she dropped her purse and, she claims, as he crawled about the floor picking up her lipstick, love letters, and cigarettes, they discussed the personality of the French—by which she means the urban upper class she identifies with. Occasionally, Trefusis shares the scene with some of her seemingly empty-headed friends—Emerald Cunard, Sybil Colfax—and her favorite author, Nancy Mitford. But, above all, Trefusis admires her mother, whose cruelty to strangers she offers as an example of wit: to an old Jewess crying during an air raid, Trefusis's mother said, ``Madam, this is not the Wailing Wall.'' Air raids, casualties, the deprivations of others—all disappear behind the ``gaiety'' of war in London, a minor inconvenience to Trefusis, cutting off her access to French cosmetics. She is, as Quennell says, a ``mythomaniac,'' an inventor, but a very unpleasant one, like the irrelevant, slightly grotesque ``decorative'' line drawings scattered throughout.
Pub Date: May 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-670-84067-X
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1992
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
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.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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