Richly detailed, though the author places Dylan on a higher shelf in the cultural library than history may permit.
The biographer of Lew Wasserman, Jack Nicholson and Otis Chandler returns with a sometimes-scholarly, sometimes-snarky life of the songwriting and singing legend.
McDougal leaves few doubts about his seriousness in this long account of Robert Zimmerman, who grew up in the small town of Hibbing, Minn. Many pages feature footnotes, some of which are substantial, others adding but a dollop of color. The author’s admiration for Dylan’s artistic accomplishments is patent—in the preface, he compares him with Shakespeare, Twain and Dickens—though he does not hesitate to blast Dylan for shoddy performances, weak records, personal coldness (even cruelty), drug and alcohol abuse, and a serial sex life that would make Casanova’s grave glow green. McDougal’s work is starkly traditional: He begins with family background and marches steadily forward in 4/4 time, showing how this small-town kid went to New York City and eventually owned it to the core. It was “Blowin’ in the Wind,” writes the author, that shot him to fame, distancing him from the many other wannabes in Greenwich Village, but Dylan later abandoned protest songs (and, soon, his acoustic guitar) and spent the next decades in a continual reinvention—of his music and his persona. But patterns emerged: He eventually wore out even the most indulgent of wives; he abruptly dropped business acquaintances and fellow musicians; he wished always to have the spotlight on him; he “borrowed” lyrics and images for his paintings; and he remained intensely private, probably realizing that too much exposure would remove the “mystery.” McDougal offers engaging details about the major records, as well as Dylan’s books and films. He even finds some good things to say about Dylan’s dreadful performance in Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.
Richly detailed, though the author places Dylan on a higher shelf in the cultural library than history may permit.Pub Date: May 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-470-63623-7
Page Count: 540
Publisher: Wiley
Review Posted Online: April 1, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2014
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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