In the context of his career writing biographies of media celebrities (Laurence Olivier, Elizabeth Taylor, Alfred Hitchcock, among many others) Spoto’s claim about God in this devotional life of Jesus—that he “identifies not with the great or famous or beautiful,” but with the simple and selfless—carries the persuasive backing of one who should know. Before becoming a professional writer, Spoto taught Catholic theology. In his introduction, he explains that his prolonged attentions to the rich and famous have never eclipsed his still stronger interest in religious life. In this book, he applies his cumulative biographical writing skills to his object of faith. The hidden Jesus of the title is the divine Christ who exceeds our conceptual reach but who, eternally alive, presents himself to faithful Christians in their personal life. The subtitle is misleading. The book is less a life of Jesus than a devotional commentary on the Gospels; and it’s not so much new—except, perhaps, for the author—as uncommon (for a non-Frenchman) in its mix of Catholic doctrine and existential philosophy. Spoto follows the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life from birth to resurrection, arguing along the way against the Virgin Birth, biblical literalism, and princely aspirations in the Catholic Church and its clergy. On two points he sends a mixed message: women and Judaism. While defending the idea of women priests, he objects to feminine pronouns for God, illogically, on grounds that “God as ‘She’ is neither any better or worse than God as ‘He.”’ And he perpetuates the very anti- Semitism, he decries in the New Testament when he locates the Jewish objection to Jesus in the presumed arrogance of the first-century priests and Pharisees, rather than in disagreement over the nature of revelation: whether it was ongoing—into the first century—in received texts or in prophetic individuals. This book would have more honest appeal repackaged as an earnest meditation on the Gospels by an unorthodox Catholic.
Pub Date: Oct. 30, 1998
ISBN: 0-312-19282-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1998
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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