A readable treatment of a scholarly subject.
A short critique of the letters between the famous James brothers provides an engaging footnote on the relationship and occasional rivalry between two of the finest minds of modern times.
Since academic writing is so often impenetrable, and since philosopher William admitted to being “baffled” by his novelist brother’s writing, one might fear that a study of the siblings from a university press might prove tough sledding. However, this analysis by Hallman (In Utopia, 2010) has a conversational tone that avoids cant. There’s an intimacy here as the brothers criticize each other’s work, engage in gossip and discuss their bowel problems: “Special, and playful attention was reserved for all manner of digestive failure,” as “Henry’s bowels were a perfect training ground for practicing elegant prose that described inelegant events.” Though William was barely a year older than Henry, his “letters often strike a parental tone” toward his younger brother, who “expressed disappointment that their mutual influence did not result in mutual appreciation.” Part of the tension was likely the differing arcs of their careers and influence; while William “inched his way into an academic career, he had watched as his younger brother jetted straight into the heart of the world’s literary elite.” Rather than resolving mysteries such as the sexuality of lifelong bachelor Henry, who “had better relationships with women in his fiction than in real life,” Hallman resists the conclusions to which others have jumped, while also showing that the relationship between the two brothers was closer, and their work more intertwined, than some have suggested. “I believe there exists no other epistolary commingling of minds as complete between figures that have each proven so influential,” writes Hallman.
A readable treatment of a scholarly subject.Pub Date: March 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-60938-151-6
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Univ. of Iowa
Review Posted Online: Dec. 31, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2013
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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