Prone to benign mischief, a literary twinkle in the eye, Buckley nails his targets more often than not yet likewise has fun...
Buckley (They Eat Puppies, Don't They?, 2012, etc.) offers stylishness and nimble wordplay in this latest collection of (generally) lightweight ruminations on contemporary culture and its foibles.
The author caroms from personal history and travel to criticism and politics, wielding a sense of humor that pirouettes from gentle to sardonic. His subjects sometimes seem too trivial to merit inclusion, and his takes on these absurdities are amusing but instantly forgettable. Yet such is the nature of the beast; most of these brief, previously published magazine essays never were intended to be more than mildly diverting, and a blithe tenor is arguably the right approach in skewering some of the more outlandish affronts. At the other end of the spectrum, seeming almost out of place in this volume, is his stark chronicle of touring Auschwitz. The strongest chapter of the book is “Farewells,” featuring Buckley's posthumous remembrances of such longtime friends as Joseph Heller and Christopher Hitchens, not to mention his father William F. Buckley's celebrated nemesis, Gore Vidal. These pieces are especially revealing, often touching, and find Buckley dispensing with his breezy tone for a timbre that is much more sober. Particularly poignant is his piece on Hitchens, a man he revered. Given their due in the “Criticism” section, among others, are Graham Greene, P.G. Wodehouse and Ray Bradbury. Buckley's outstanding introduction to The Stories of Ray Bradbury (2010) is a richly deserved paean to one of the most influential writers of the late 20th century. Though a clear and self-deprecating writer, Buckley sometimes wears his erudition on his sleeve, echoing his late father's penchant for extravagant polysyllabic effusions—e.g., “chrestomathies,” “diapasons,” “froideurs” and “vernissages.” Secure a dictionary.
Prone to benign mischief, a literary twinkle in the eye, Buckley nails his targets more often than not yet likewise has fun with unexpected asides, like the “excruciatingly chaste” plays of the otherwise notorious Marquis de Sade.Pub Date: May 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-4951-8
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
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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