Whether or not Pekar has exhausted the storytelling possibilities of his own life, fans will appreciate this change of pace.
The latest from the renowned graphic memoirist offers a fascinating character study of a character who isn’t Harvey Pekar.
Though Cleveland’s Pekar (American Splendor, 2004, etc.) has mined his own life for stories that have taken him from the comic-book pages to late-night TV to the big screen, the writer here turns the spotlight on another character. Meet Michael Malice, whose issues with authority, ambition and political correctness will strike a familiar chord with Pekar’s readers. Through the illustrations of Gary Dumm, the reader enters the world of this Brooklyn-raised son of Russian immigrants, a young man who quickly realizes that the American dream isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. From grade school through college and into the workforce (where he finds his comfort level as a temp), he always seems to be something of a misfit or an outcast, feeling that he’s so much brighter than those who would attempt to teach him or judge him. As the title of the book suggests, Michael might be a little too smart for his own good—quick to reject conventional wisdom and common sense in favor of an intellectual rigidity that puts him in a league with the likes of Ayn Rand. Pekar and Dumm invite the reader to identify with Malice, telling his story through his eyes in his words, yet the course of his life puts his vaunted intelligence at odds with the realities of the world around him. The narrative has all the deadpan realism of Pekar’s autobiographical work, and even has some sort of happy—or at least optimistic—ending that the writer has never previously permitted himself.
Whether or not Pekar has exhausted the storytelling possibilities of his own life, fans will appreciate this change of pace.Pub Date: March 28, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-47939-4
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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