An informed mind and heart, a generous spirit—these are the human qualities that emerge on virtually every page of this...
An eclectic, entertaining and shelf-bending collection of essays, memoirs, introductions, diaries and commentary from the noted English actor, playwright and art-lover.
In his introduction, Bennett (Writing Home, 1995, etc.) alludes to the colon cancer he battled in the late 1990s, and he concludes this massive and moving anthology with an essay about that experience—one of the strongest of many strong pieces. He quips, “Sometimes I felt that more people had seen the inside of my bum than had seen some productions at the National Theatre.” This appealing self-deprecation is a hallmark of Bennett’s prose, including his opening essay, a long piece about a number of his relatives—but with a sharp focus on the mental deterioration of his mother. Bennett also writes about his first awareness that he was gay (including a touching moment with his father, who asks, “You’re not one of them, are you?”). Bennett includes segments from his diary (1996–2004), with comments on the deaths of many of his friends and coevals—among them, John Gielgud, Alec Guinness, John Schlesinger and Alan Bates. He comments, as well, on the death of Princess Di, 9/11, the Iraq War (which he despises). There are a couple of very compelling sections about the plays he’s written (for stage, radio, film and television), and some essays about another of his loves—paintings. (In his diary, he chronicles visits to galleries all over the world.) There’s also an interesting text of a speech in which he identifies four paintings that ought to hang in every English school. Bennett loves the poetry of Philip Larkin, and that poet’s name and words pop up frequently in these pages. Among the best pieces is “Staring Out of the Window,” a brief, lucid essay about writing. Another very strong and troubling essay deals with a physical assault he suffered in 1992.
An informed mind and heart, a generous spirit—these are the human qualities that emerge on virtually every page of this splendid collection.Pub Date: April 7, 2006
ISBN: 0-374-28103-3
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 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
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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