This hefty volume of writings by one of the original Beyond the Fringe members reveals the contours and continuities in Bennett's seemingly haphazard subsequent career as a playwright and screenwriter (most recently for The Madness of King George). These talks, diaries, book reviews, and bagatelles were written mostly for the London Review of Books, a venue amenable to the self-proclaimed ``soft centrist'' writer, whose compassion and intelligence come through vividly in this wonderful collection. In autobiographical essays, the butcher's son from Leeds neither wallows in his working-class roots nor discards them wholesale at the altar of high culture. A number of memoirs here record his uneasy entrance into the academic and cultural worlds, where he has always felt a bit awkward and embarrassed. He fondly eulogizes TV performer Russell Harty and his producer at the BBC, Innes Lloyd. His diaries of working on his plays, Forty Years On most prominent among them, include great theatrical anecdotes, especially about John Gielgud. Bennett's fondness for neurotic Czech Franz Kafka and grumpy librarian Philip Larkin leads to a number of essays and reviews. The lengthy selections from Bennett's diaries, mostly from the '80s, give vent to his distaste for Margaret Thatcher and Rupert Murdoch; chronicle a writer's conference in Moscow, a mugging in NYC, and his endless arguments with himself. The longest batch of entries tell the amazing story of a slightly deranged old woman who lived in a van in Bennett's driveway for 15 years. Fascinated by the sex lives of others, Bennett is coy about his own, relying on a faux sense of decorum that's much like his affected philistinism. Some satirical bits remind us most enjoyably of Bennett's skills as a writer for stage, TV, and the big screen. Chatty, modest, and always entertaining. (32 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-44489-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1995
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
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.
