Crude and often nonsensical, these stories of Rochlin’s WWII experiences were written as monologues for his one-man show. Now in his 70s, Rochlin, a former B-24 navigator, took a storytelling workshop with Spalding Gray, and this is the result. Noting that the “older I get, the more I remember things that never happened,” he tells eight tales of varying credibility and tastelessness. In the title story, Rochlin—nicknamed “Rockets——bails out over Yugoslavia, suffering a fractured jaw and broken ribs. Rescued by partisans, he is, without explanation, cheerfully asked to execute three German prisoners. His only comment: “It didn’t take any courage, you just pulled a trigger.” His escort for the 400-kilometer stroll back to Italy, the earthy Maruska, following dual bouts of diarrhea, asks, “You think I no beautiful? I don’t want to die virgin. Why don’t you put your hand on my siski?” Following the first night of “fig-fig,” he complained his “hooey was on fire and it started to drip stuff.” Several of Rochlin’s stories involve a “glamour boy” pilot and the colonel he’s discovered in bed with, “in that head-to-toe 69 position . . . Hell, I didn’t even know guys did stuff like that.” When the pilot is killed, the inebriated, grieving colonel tries to rape Rockets; he fends him off and, with the local priest’s help, fixes him up with a gay portrait painter. In another, quite detailed piece, he assists in a drunken cesarean section on a 14-year-old girl. The final entry has him having sex with his uncle’s wife, who later tells him how much she loves her husband and “will never betray him.” Huh? Perhaps as staged monologues, in Rochlin’s voice, these at least have some semblance of believability and sense. Here, they come off as simply careless, pointless, and offensive.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-019426-X
Page Count: 160
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1999
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
