An understated, observant, and earnest memoir from an acclaimed novelist.
The second installment of American novelist Plante’s memoir (Becoming a Londoner, 2013, etc.) of his long love affair with Nikos Stangos (1936-2004), the Greek-born editor of the publishing house Thames and Hudson.
In this elegant follow-up to Becoming a Londoner, the author concentrates on the 1980s, moving among London, Italy, and Tulsa, Oklahoma. Deaths among his gay community from HIV/AIDS were just becoming a creeping, recurring reality in Plante’s diary, which he kept dutifully during his life with Stangos. Since the mid-1960s, the two had cultivated a deep friendship with poet Stephen Spender and his Russian wife, Natasha. They benefitted from Spender’s stellar social connections with artists like David Hockney and moved in a tight artistic circle in London and New York as well as Lucca, Italy, where Plante and Stangos lived together. The worldly Spender (in his 70s) appears here infatuated with a young American student, and their correspondence was strictly kept from his wife by using Plante and Stangos as go-betweens. Plante, in his mid-40s, also battled duel affections—e.g., for his former Turkish lover who lived in New York and died shockingly of AIDS; and successful American artist Jennifer Bartlett, about whom Plante was truly conflicted. Both relationships caused Stangos terrible agonies of jealousy, while Stangos’ flirtation with a young man in his publishing office greatly affected Plante. The most engaging moments in the book chronicle the time when the author shared a house in Tulsa with prickly Australian critic Germaine Greer and they both got jobs teaching at the University of Tulsa. Also entertaining is Plante’s anecdote about when he was asked by acquaintance Philip Roth to accompany him to Israel to research a new novel. Full of questions about Plante’s non-Jewishness and sexuality, Roth may have used Plante as a model for his goyish character in The Counterlife (1986).
An understated, observant, and earnest memoir from an acclaimed novelist.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4088-5480-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Nov. 6, 2015
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
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