A fruitful, well-written blend of cultural history, literary criticism, and biography. Now the only question is, where’s the...
Jack London—socialist agitator, rancher, and, oh yes, writer: an illuminating study of a literary figure long receded into stereotype.
Tichi’s (English and American Studies/Vanderbilt Univ.; Civic Passions: Seven Who Launched Progressive America (and What They Teach Us), 2009, etc.) resurrection of London and her elevation of him from writer of hoary Arctic tales for children to wizened philosopher of the barricades is certainly timely. He lived in the first Gilded Age, a time “undershot with stupendous wealth inequality, cycles of joblessness…and an imperial global presence that brought indigenous populations to heel while exploiting their natural resources.” Though London was a marquee writer whose work elevated him from want to wealth, he remained true to his working-class roots and never surrendered his vision of an America reformed to allow for a greater share for all. He conveyed this vision in sometimes heavy-handed ways, as with his late novel The Iron Heel (1908), but Tichi credits him for displaying “a certain subtlety.” London’s message rings true in such books as White Fang (1906) but never at the expense of a walloping good story. Tichi traces the growth of London’s activism as he moved from place to place, especially when he visited the South Pacific and saw predatory capitalism at work undisguised: “In boyhood he had seen the flags of distant nations flying from the masts along the Oakland waterfront….Many of those flags signified political, corporate, and military power, and the word for that nexus was ‘imperialism.’ ” Tichi also limns a London who was far more evolved than the square-jawed prizefighter and adventurer of legend, a sophisticated political thinker who brought immense learning to bear—not least on his work establishing what today we would call an organic farm not far from San Francisco, building a vast working knowledge of agriculture, construction, irrigation, and other fields.
A fruitful, well-written blend of cultural history, literary criticism, and biography. Now the only question is, where’s the Jack London of today?Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4696-2266-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Univ. of North Carolina
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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
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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