Curious? Eccentric? The only thing curious is the subtitle itself, for the portrait painted here is of a dirtbag, pure and...
Dickerson (North To Canada, 1999, etc.) offers a low-rent biography of a sleazy character who deserves no better.
Colonel Tom Parker rose from being the pitchman for midway medicine shows to become the manager of Eddy Arnold and then the king himself, Elvis, leaving a trail of slime any slug would admire. The author gives him the full tabloid treatment: Parker goes from being plain “brash, boastful, and at time downright obnoxious” to downright venal in a few quick steps. Addicted to gambling, Parker mortgaged Elvis to Las Vegas to bankroll his vice (which amounted to more than $1,000,000 a year to one casino alone). He pushed Elvis to go on stage when a more appropriate venue for him would have been a hospital room; he never attempted to stop him from gorming barbiturates; he bullied Elvis’s friends and strong-armed publishers and songwriters into giving up their rights. Unfortunately, the value of Dickerson’s spadework in digging up so much damning material is compromised by his sensational approach. He gives us pop psychology (“By Christmas, Elvis desperately needed to trust someone, a person from whom he could receive unquestioning approval”), snobbery (“He should have been with a circus somewhere. That’s where he started, with dancing chickens and turkeys”), and dangling insinuations (“Exactly what Parker had in mind is uncertain and may never come to light, but. . .”). Too frequently, he also makes a hash out of facts: “During the first year more than a half million people visited Graceland” gives way to “more than 300,000 fans paid to tour the mansion in the first year.” Then there’s the sheer bombast and nonsense: “One cannot look at Colonel Parker without seeing the worst—and the best—of America as a nation.” Best? Please.
Curious? Eccentric? The only thing curious is the subtitle itself, for the portrait painted here is of a dirtbag, pure and simple. (Photos, not seen)Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-8154-1088-3
Page Count: 253
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2001
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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