The founder of the Pushcart Press and editor of its Pushcart Prize series writes a coming-of-middle-age memoir that gets as intimate as a memoir ought to. Opening with the death of his mother, Henderson recalls life as her son and the son of a father besotted with fundamentalist religion. His reaction, of course, was a bohemian life as an unpublished literary artist intoxicated with words. For this wannabe beat author of the great American novel, life in New York as the '60s turned into the '70s appeared to be one of unbridled venery, with a plentitude of screwing, booze, screwing, drugs, screwing, laughs, and genial copulation. The beau monde is described in a set piece about a visit to a sex palace that is less erotic than plain raunchy (and not particularly helpful to those who still hope for federal funding for the arts). All the while Henderson was yearning for Miss Right. Along with a few near-Miss Rights, he finally met her, and though her name was Annie, she looked a lot like Ellen Burstyn. His blood pressure became elevated. He suffered palpitations. He shipped books from his garage, the early offices of his Pushcart Press, and endured uxorious mishaps as he finally settled down with Annie and a Chesapeake retriever (named Ellen Burstyn). And the reprobate began a reformation. To the couple's eventual delight, Annie became pregnant, and after much prepartum bleeding, graphically reported, she gave birth to a daughter. Henderson rejoices in the evergreen miracle. Now his daughter is 11, and he has returned to a fervent religion of the buttonholing variety. He ends his story with the astonishment, common to every daddy, at the beauty and bravery, the wit and wisdom of his child, his wonderful child. Just this side of bathos, this is a heartfelt and affecting story of a scapegrace who achieved grace through the oldest of marvels, parenthood.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-571-19872-4
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s...
Music journalist and musician Wald (Talking 'Bout Your Mama: The Dozens, Snaps, and the Deep Roots of Rap, 2014, etc.) focuses on one evening in music history to explain the evolution of contemporary music, especially folk, blues, and rock.
The date of that evening is July 25, 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival, where there was an unbelievably unexpected occurrence: singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, already a living legend in his early 20s, overriding the acoustic music that made him famous in favor of electronically based music, causing reactions ranging from adoration to intense resentment among other musicians, DJs, and record buyers. Dylan has told his own stories (those stories vary because that’s Dylan’s character), and plenty of other music journalists have explored the Dylan phenomenon. What sets Wald's book apart is his laser focus on that one date. The detailed recounting of what did and did not occur on stage and in the audience that night contains contradictory evidence sorted skillfully by the author. He offers a wealth of context; in fact, his account of Dylan's stage appearance does not arrive until 250 pages in. The author cites dozens of sources, well-known and otherwise, but the key storylines, other than Dylan, involve acoustic folk music guru Pete Seeger and the rich history of the Newport festival, a history that had created expectations smashed by Dylan. Furthermore, the appearances on the pages by other musicians—e.g., Joan Baez, the Weaver, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Dave Van Ronk, and Gordon Lightfoot—give the book enough of an expansive feel. Wald's personal knowledge seems encyclopedic, and his endnotes show how he ranged far beyond personal knowledge to produce the book.
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s personal feelings about Dylan's music or persona.Pub Date: July 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236668-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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