Incandescent rock star Jim Morrison doused his own fire by drowning, drugged, in a Paris bathtub 20 years ago. Here, on the heels of The Doors, Oliver Stone's major new film about Morrison, are two heavily illustrated, brief biographies of the singer- composer. In very different ways, each does a good job of re- creating Morrison's life. Jones, London correspondent for Rolling Stone, takes the more objective approach, presenting in clear, solid prose Morrison's rise and fall, relying on a wealth of interviews with those who knew the star; Dalton, a contributing editor for Rolling Stone, writes with poetic fervor that mimics Morrison's woozy, manic intensity even as it adulates. For instance, in describing Morrison's notorious performance at the 1969 Miami concert that got him busted for indecent exposure, Jones writes, 'Here was the vulgar poet in all his drunk and disorderly glory...belching, grabbing his crotch, gobbling the microphone like it was rapidly melting ice cream'; Dalton writes, '...today—now!— he could see the future...The thinnest of membranes separates us from it. Morrison would rip it open...wherefore wouldst thou concern thyself with such matters as personal safety, O my brothers, at this the eleventh hour?' Sixty-five color and 65 b&w photos boost the Jones; the 40 color and 75 b&w photos that accompany the Dylan were not seen.
Pub Date: May 24, 1991
ISBN: 0-312-05900-0
Page Count: 160
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1991
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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