Candid, often sordid, and definitely a page-turner.
A hugely successful writer for TV, movies, and comics makes his debut as a memoirist with a stunning chronicle of survival.
Straczynski grew up in a destructive family, subjected to “the worst kinds of physical, psychological, and emotional torture” by an alcoholic, violently abusive father, a lifelong admirer of Nazis; a depressed mother, repeatedly institutionalized, who once dropped her young son from a roof; and a grandmother who tried to sexually abuse him. The family was rootless, moving 21 times in 19 years, often fleeing in the middle of the night and “roaring cross-country in an alcohol-fueled haze of drunken violence” to take up residence somewhere else. In one unheated apartment, ill with pneumonia, the author slept in front of an open oven door all night for warmth. He suffered corporal punishment at a Catholic school run by angry nuns and was victimized by bullies elsewhere. Comics, and especially Superman, provided Straczynski with escape and hope. Morally upright, patient, gentle, and powerful, the valiant hero became his model. A bright spot in his dismal childhood occurred in his senior year of high school, when two teachers saw his potential and invested “time, effort, and belief” in him, praising his writing and encouraging him. The author recounts his rocky start as a writer, sending short stories to magazines and collecting rejection slips; getting a gig as a humor columnist for a college newspaper; taking creative writing classes; and submitting reviews, feature articles, screenplays for sitcom pilots, and scripts. He wrote tirelessly and obsessively, not eating or sleeping, until finally some of his efforts bore fruit. Successes, which seemed like miracles, often were followed with spectacular failures. Although he encourages young writers to work hard and follow their passion, the viciously competitive and capricious entertainment industry, as he portrays it, is not for the faint-hearted. Besides recalling professional challenges, Straczynski admits personal struggles resulting from emotional wounds: “social awkwardness” and “compulsive self-reliance” that made him unable to form lasting relationships.
Candid, often sordid, and definitely a page-turner.Pub Date: July 23, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-285784-2
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
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
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
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