This threatens at first to be a one-joke story, but gradually the people become more real, the writing more honest. When it...
A professional, city-living woman up and moves herself and boyfriend to a farm, where everything is way different from what she’s used to. Eventually, she and boyfriend find true happiness. It really happened, she says. The End.
Washington Post Magazine columnist Laskas expanded this tale from a series of articles, although readers might guess that without being told. Writers of humorous articles, like stand-up comics, often aim for the quick laugh, one that cannot be too closely examined. For instance, early on, Laskas wants to illustrate how doggone unsophisticated folks are in Scenery Hill, as compared to Pittsburgh. Her example: in Scenery Hill, a whole bunch of the men she meets have the same first name—Joe. Some of them even have the same last name. (In those cases, they’re usually father and son, but hey, those country folk are something, aren’t they?) Thankfully, those same people eventually acquire a third dimension, and so does Laskas’s story. Amid its description of tractors and animals, it’s a love story, starring Laskas and a fiancé who appears to be the perfect man. He is understanding and cooperative with everyone. (Well, he’s a shrink.) There’s a running joke about his poodle: whenever one of their neighbors expresses astonishment that he owns one, he or Laskas says something like, “It’s a standard poodle, not the little yappy kind.” A similar defense can be made for Laskas’s whole story: in the long run, it’s substantial, not merely a collection of one-liners. In fact it explores such substantive issues as how our childhoods influence our adult lives and the different ways we each—country or city—face love, work, illness, and death.
This threatens at first to be a one-joke story, but gradually the people become more real, the writing more honest. When it stops going for the laughs, it gets them anyway, along with a whole passel of genuine emotions.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2000
ISBN: 0-553-10904-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2000
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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