It appears to be kiss-and-tell season on Jewish American male novelists; Philip Roth got his last fall, and now Saul Bellow gets his. Wasserman writes without either sentiment or bitterness about the man she devotedly represented for 25 years and who then left her for literary agent provocateur Andrew Wylie (a.k.a. the Jackal). This lack of emotional direction leaves readers a bit confused as to what she wants us to make of the whole thing. In her introduction, Wasserman writes of the ``extra privilege'' of being connected with ``a man of genius, of high art and moral vision, an original thinker,'' and defends him against the familiar charges of misogyny and womanizing. Yet the first episode she relates is how Bellow the noted author turned his eye on her, a young assistant to his agent at Russell & Volkening, selected her to be the first reader of Humboldt's Gift, came to her apartment to discuss it over dinner, and bedded her (a disastrous experience after which, Wasserman assures us, they became the best of platonic friends). And every succeeding incident seems to highlight some petty, mean, selfish act by Bellow. He invited her to visit him in Spain, only to inform her on her arrival that he was leaving the next day, and asked her to cash her travelers' checks for him because he needed money. When his mother-in-law became extremely ill in Romania, Bellow accompanied his wife to see her, though, Wasserman flatly states, ``it was definitely not Saul's style, rushing off like that to be a support to someone.'' She put up with his insensitivity and wisely managed his literary career because that is what nurturing agents do for their simpering author-children. But Wasserman doesn't have much flair for writing, and this spotty look at a 25-year relationship just leaves one wondering where the pleasure was in knowing Saul Bellow.
Pub Date: June 23, 1997
ISBN: 0-88064-177-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1997
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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