An affectionate, sharp-eyed memoir that, while it doesn't add anything groundbreaking to the rock-lit canon, will appeal to...
A visit to the magical, blood-spattered world of the Alice Cooper Group, courtesy of Dunaway, the band’s bassist, co-songwriter and “theatrical conceptionalist.”
Hard-rock fans of a certain generation think of Alice Cooper as the original shock rocker, a platinum-selling performance artist who took to the stage looking as if he stepped out of A Clockwork Orange, ranting and raving about billion-dollar babies and how school was out forever. Today, in comparison to the Marilyn Mansons of the world, Cooper's schtick seems almost quaint, but during his heydey, he was a frightening, formidable force in the rock world. A close friend from childhood on, Dunaway was with Cooper every step of the way, and he documents that story in this agreeable memoir. But does Cooper’s place in the rock world merit a memoir from his bassist, and is the bassist a good enough memoirist to overcome his own lack of notoriety? The answer to both questions is a qualified yes. Dunaway makes a solid case for Cooper’s place in the rock pantheon, continually pointing out not just the fact that he was an above-average singer, songwriter, and frontman, but also the role he played in incorporating theater into rock performance. To Dunaway’s credit, the book is more than just an homage to his old friend; it’s a love letter to an era. But it’s not all roses. Readers looking for the kind of lasciviousness they expect from an Alice Cooper confidant won’t be disappointed, as the author does plenty of sordid, albeit not-too-slimy dishing about the band’s backstage shenanigans. Dunaway has a terrific memory, which is both a positive and negative: though the book can get bogged down in minutiae, the author leaves no stone unturned.
An affectionate, sharp-eyed memoir that, while it doesn't add anything groundbreaking to the rock-lit canon, will appeal to Alice Cooper die-hards and fans of his brand of music.Pub Date: June 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-04808-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2015
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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