MEMORIES OF JOHN LENNON

Name: MEMORIES OF JOHN LENNON
Author: Yoko Ono
ISBN: 0-06-059455-1

edited by Yoko Ono ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 1, 2005

Largely useless as biography, musical analysis or gossip, this flavorless warm-fuzzy seems like a book Lennon would have...

bookshelf

Imagine a John Lennon tribute that doesn’t serve as a mild sedative.

Because this one, edited by Lennon’s widow, Ono, takes the same wearisome, anodyne tack as the plethora of Lennon-eulogizing sundries that have accumulated in the years since his death. The majority of the entries, many from warmed-over celebrities such as Bono, Elton John and Carly Simon, follow a maddeningly predictable template in which the contributor notes Lennon’s sharp wit, remembers a small personal kindness and wistfully suggests that we could sure use a guy like him today. A significant number of these reminiscences have been cut-and-pasted from old interviews, giving the book a somewhat shoddy, opportunistic feel. Many respondents are compelled to rhapsodize over Lennon’s peace anthem, “Imagine”—presumably its cozy utopian homilies are worthier of consideration than audacious, disturbing works like “A Day in the Life” or “I Am the Walrus” that made Lennon worth talking about in the first place. Some pieces are worthwhile: A cousin of Lennon amusingly recounts Lennon’s horror of physical labor; session musician Andy Newmark gives a revealing account of Lennon’s demeanor in the recording studio; musician and artist Klaus Voorman touchingly describes and illustrates Lennon’s “house husband” phase; and activist Tom Hayden provides a useful summary of the Nixon administration’s role in Lennon’s immigration problems. In an unintentional high point illustrating the collection’s general pointlessness, Ray Charles hilariously praises Lennon and the Beatles’ musical genius with a list of songs written by Paul McCartney. Speaking of the Cute One, he and Ringo are conspicuously absent, perhaps to make space for Paul Reiser.

Largely useless as biography, musical analysis or gossip, this flavorless warm-fuzzy seems like a book Lennon would have shunned. The sort of thing a well meaning grandmother might pick up in an airport gift shop for her little Jeremy, who likes the rock music.

Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2005

ISBN: 0-06-059455-1

Page Count: 320

Publisher: HarperEntertainment

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2005

Categories:

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

bookshelf

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.

bookshelf

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

bookshelf

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...

bookshelf

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)