An impossible mess of memory and desire.
A collection of essays in which Morrison probes the beginnings of his gay self-identity—a process undoubtedly more intriguing for him than it is for us.
The author treads familiar ground in queer autobiography: childhood longings and confusions are trotted out like trick ponies as he advances from naïveté to knowledge. Violin lessons with a class of girls, the spiritual exigencies of Catholicism, the frustrations of family vacations, and a youthful crush on teen idol David Cassidy—these times and trials of youth serve as the basis of Morrison’s retrospective analysis of the intersection between sexuality and identity in his childhood. Even the tried-and-true twin locations of queer adolescent angst and opportunity—gym and drama class—make their obligatory appearance. The tales themselves offer the promised insight into Morrison’s queer apotheosis, but his floundering and fluctuating tone inhibits the graceful flow of the narrative. At different points in the narrative his voice mimics a sociologist (“In American suburbia, the acquisition of the family pet consolidates the family itself by way of the very processes of acquisition”), the heroine of a Harlequin romance (“ ‘Oh, Cadmus,’ I cry, ‘did you think I would forget you? How could I ever forget my own dear, sweet Cadmus?’ ”), and a New Age guru (“The boy dreams. In the dream he is alone”). Such jerky and stilted tones destroy the quiet accumulation of childhood memories that might have created a handsome patchwork of gay longings and musings. Any hope that such a delightfully queer amalgamation may arise, however, dashes to pieces at such moments of irrelevance as (to take just one example) the author’s extended reflections on President Clinton and the Lewinsky scandal. With more scenes of boyhood wrestling and less pontificating, Morrison’s story might have found its way. But that was not to be.
An impossible mess of memory and desire.Pub Date: March 14, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-26129-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 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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