by William S. Burroughs & Victor Bockris ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 25, 1981
After the resounding thud made by Burroughs' last novel, Cities of the Red Night, these transcriptions of table-talk serve some rehabilitative purpose, presenting a picture of an aging, conservative, serious man who, with his best work perhaps now behind him, admits himself that he may have come to sound "like some sort of great nineteenth-century crank who thought that brown sugar was the answer to everything and was practicing something he called brain breathing." It has to be said, in fairness, that the range of Burroughs' intellect seems hardly tested by his interlocutors here: editor Bockris ("Burroughs is similar to Muhammad All and Andy Warhol, two of the other stars [sic] I've written portraits of. All three are exactly what they appear to be"); rock starlets like Patti Smith and Deborah Harry; a particularly shrill Allen Ginsberg; an at-less-than-full-tilt Susan Sontag. We learn that Burroughs hates muggers (he would like to form a private vigilante group, "The Cane Brigade" or "Order of the Grey Gentlemen"); that he has some interesting ideas about succubi and incubi, despises the Iranian mullahs, and lives in a windowless downtown Manhattan apartment called "The Bunker." Only one tape is unequivocally wonderful: the hilarious Terry Southern sifting through, with Burroughs, a shopping-bag filled with various drug-samples a pharmacist-friend had given him ("'Pain!'—look for the word 'pain' . . . that's the key"). Otherwise, this is more a portrait of others' need for Burroughs to be an elder Great than of the more modest (and more engaging) actuality.
Pub Date: May 25, 1981
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Seaver
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1981
Share your opinion of this book
More by William S. Burroughs
BOOK REVIEW
by William S. Burroughs edited by Geoffrey D. Smith John M. Bennett
BOOK REVIEW
by William S. Burroughs edited by Bill Morgan
BOOK REVIEW
by William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac
by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 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
Share your opinion of this book
by Daniel Kahneman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2011
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
Share your opinion of this book
More by Daniel Kahneman
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.