An impressive portrait—but with blank spots another biographer must one day fill in. (8 pp. b&w photos)
Oddly incomplete biography of the New Yorker writer whose mysterious late-life madness sent her homeless into the streets she had written about for years with grace and precision.
Bourke (Modern Irish/University College, Dublin; The Burning of Bridget Cleary, 2000, etc.) had never heard of Maeve Brennan (1917–93) until 1997, when a friend gave her a copy of The Springs of Affection, whose title story she now considers one of the great pieces of short fiction in the English language. Soon she was committed to learn all she could about a writer whose Irish roots proved to have many connections with Bourke’s. The author begins with several chapters about Brennan’s family (her father was an Irish political radical and writer of mysteries) and about the geography, history, and architecture of those regions of Ireland later showcased in the heavily autobiographical fiction Brennan published in the New Yorker between 1952 and 1972. She left Ireland at age 17, in 1934, when her father accepted a diplomatic position in Washington, D.C. Her first job in journalism was as a fashion writer for Harper’s Bazaar; in 1949 she moved to the New Yorker, where she initially wrote unsigned book reviews. For years, in addition to her stories, she also contributed essays to the magazine’s “Talk of the Town” section, most of them featuring a fictional “long-winded lady”; they were popular enough to be collected in book form in 1969. But her success at the magazine did not bring Brennan riches or much fame. She had one failed marriage and many financial and tax problems. She moved swiftly from quirky to eccentric to mad and eventually died in a nursing home, though her biographer’s speculations about the reasons for this decline are less than satisfactory. Bad and bizarre things happened, but why? The book is notable, however, for Bourke’s first-rate descriptions and analyses of Brennan’s fiction.
An impressive portrait—but with blank spots another biographer must one day fill in. (8 pp. b&w photos)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-58243-229-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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