“I warped a few things,” says Thompson of his writing. When you’re a radioactive force field of one, what do you expect?...
One of “the last unrepentant public dope fiends” (Fear and Loathing in America, 2000, etc.) is still armed and dangerous after these many years, whether fingering typewriter or pistol.
“Hell, I don’t miss those whispers, those soft groans of fear when I enter a civilized room,” Thompson writes in this collection of political and personal dispatches, attributing the mutterings to the failed understanding that he’s a teenage girl trapped in the body of a 65-year-old doper and career criminal. Maybe, but anybody might quail before someone whose day begins: “I finished my ham and eggs and knocked back some whiskey and picked up my Weatherby Mark V .300 Magnum and a ball of black Opium for dessert and went outside with a fierce kind of joy in my heart.” Thompson is too outrageous ever to grow stale, his storytelling too rockingly mad to ignore: “I had stopped for the moment beside the road to put out a newspaper fire in the backseat. . . .” Put it out with a can of beer, that is, while a mountain lion takes a leap at him from a cliff above. There are vengeful tangents, Old Testament fury, acts of retribution, accidents not waiting to happen but proceeding nonstop. And choice bons mots: “Texas is not the only state full of wealthy freaks with sinister agendas,” or the personally apt but nonetheless scary, “morality is temporary, wisdom is permanent.” The Thompson wisdom on political protest: “A Willingness to Argue, however violently, implies a faith of some basic kind in the antagonist.” On the invasion of Grenada: “low-risk, high-gain, cost-plus.” And more—the whole with enough bile to make a really big custard.
“I warped a few things,” says Thompson of his writing. When you’re a radioactive force field of one, what do you expect? Candent prose that still screws and buckles all it touches.Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2003
ISBN: 0-684-87323-0
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2002
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
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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