Repetitious and flabby (Frank can't stay in a hotel without Brian telling us the room number), with the same Dune minutiae...
Son Brian, who’s continued dad’s most famous saga (Dune: The Butlerian Jihad, 2002, etc., with Kevin J. Anderson), chronicles in endless detail the life of a writer who scaled new pinnacles in SF.
Born in Tacoma, Washington, in 1920, young Frank didn't have much of a childhood; he was forced to care for a younger sister as his parents descended into alcoholism. At 19 he got a job on a newspaper, at 21 he enlisted in the Navy, was dumped by his first wife, and received an honorable discharge without seeing combat after a grotesque accident in 1943. Back in the Pacific Northwest, Herbert wrote for newspapers and politicians, drove like a maniac, and in 1946 married Beverly Forbes, a psychic of Scottish descent. He treated their three children (Brian was the eldest) with a curious combination of angry neglect and exquisite cruelty. Whatever he did, he did with his entire being, from uprooting the whole family to live in Mexico to single-mindedly acquiring information for his work in progress. From his modestly successful first novel, The Dragon in the Sea (1956), he developed the Dune vision, which consumed him for the next seven years. Twenty-three publishers rejected the completed text before Chilton published a hardcover edition in 1965. Chronically short of money, Frank wrote stories and novels and eventually extended the Dune saga. Four Dune movie deals fell through before David Lynch in 1984 completed a nearly five-hour film, gutted to two (and doomed) by a studio power struggle. During all this, Brian slowly and painfully endeavored to understand his father and build a relationship with him; clearly, however, intimidation and hero worship lingered until Frank’s death from a pulmonary embolism in 1986.
Repetitious and flabby (Frank can't stay in a hotel without Brian telling us the room number), with the same Dune minutiae endlessly recycled. Nonetheless, a fascinating picture of this furiously energetic, driven, determined, sometimes childlike genius.Pub Date: March 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-765-30646-8
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
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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