A moving portrait of two unalike but kindred spirits who did indeed “Dare [to] see a Soul at the ‘White Heat.’ ”
The editor criticized for dumbing down the great American poet’s work gets a fairer assessment from literary biographer Wineapple (Hawthorne, 2003, etc.).
Dickinson (1830–86) wrote her first letter to Higginson (1823–1911) in 1862, coyly asking, “Are you too deeply occupied to say if my Verse is alive?” She had not chosen him at random; known as an ardent proponent of women’s rights, he had just published an article in the Atlantic Monthly offering advice to aspiring writers. Higginson responded positively, but advised Dickinson to “delay” publication and made some attempts to regularize her unconventional prosody and punctuation. Ever since, scholars have depicted him as the clueless Victorian who condescended to genius. On the contrary, Wineapple demonstrates in her astute assessment of their quarter-century epistolary relationship (they met in person only a few times), he was in awe of her from the beginning, well aware that his considerable gifts as a polemicist and essayist paled in comparison to her brilliance. Quoting extensively from Dickinson’s letters to Higginson and the poems she enclosed in them (his side of the correspondence has been lost), the author shows a powerful—and sexually suggestive—writer who disguised her forcefulness in coquettish, sometimes simpering prose. Higginson was not fooled. He had never met anyone “who drained my nerve power so much,” he wrote to his wife after their first meeting. “I am glad not to live near her.” At a safe distance, he relished the privilege of being the favored recipient of “thoughts of such a quality.” Wineapple never makes quite clear what Higginson gave the poet other than a sympathetic ear, and she devotes too many pages to his ardent abolitionism, which had little impact on Dickinson. Still, she paints a warm portrait of an honorable man remarkably free from the prejudices of his time whose appeal for his sequestered friend—and appreciation of her artistry—is evident. The biographer blames co-editor Mabel Loomis Todd for most of the editorial meddling in the posthumous 1890 and 1891 editions of Dickinson’s work.
A moving portrait of two unalike but kindred spirits who did indeed “Dare [to] see a Soul at the ‘White Heat.’ ”Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4000-4401-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2008
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
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
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