Surprisingly readable, despite the author’s abundant disgust for himself and others.
Driven by a series of demons he’s eager to detail, debut memoirist Itzkoff lays bare the torments of his young, post-collegiate life as an aspiring editor in the testosterone-scented offices of men’s magazine publishers.
With his seething resentment, sexual desperation, and near-crippling insecurity, the author bears more than a passing resemblance to Philip Roth’s Portnoy. This time, however, our narrator’s Jewish mother is basically off the hook; it’s Dad who is the ultimate source of their son’s sufferings. Itzkoff bookends his coming-of-age tale with portraits of his father, a furrier who drowned disappointments in cocaine. When the story opens after Dave’s graduation from Princeton in 1998, Dad has retired to the New Jersey suburbs to drift around the house in his underwear; at its close, he has nearly died of a drug overdose. Meanwhile, his son, determined not to be this kind of man, is bouncing around the Manhattan offices of men’s magazines, first at Details, then Maxim. Working for these publications is less fulfilling that Itzkoff had imagined, however; full of loathing for himself and everyone around him, the author portrays his professional milieu as a waking nightmare of puerile torment and emotional distance. Offering plenty of dirt for those interested in four-year-old magazine gossip, the author isn’t shy about describing the debauchery and flawed human relations that were the rule in his places of employ. In fact, he isn’t shy about describing anything, including his difficulties with relationships, his various bouts of drug use, and the very specific details of an unpleasant session with a prostitute. At every possible moment, Itzkoff shoehorns in self-deprecating Jewish slurs, mentioning his high-school nose job at least twice. Taken as a whole, however, the author’s tale has a not-unappealing nervous energy, and his jumpy, edgy prose will probably keep readers turning the pages.
Surprisingly readable, despite the author’s abundant disgust for himself and others.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2004
ISBN: 1-4000-6113-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2004
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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