The book’s great sadness is matched by the skill and vitality of Hersh’s writing; it will make treasured and troubled...
Glimpses of a musician’s life and death.
When the singer-songwriter Vic Chesnutt (1964-2009) committed suicide with an overdose of muscle relaxants, he left behind an acclaimed, if not widely known, body of work and a devoted following, particularly among fellow musicians. One of those musicians is Hersh (Rat Girl: A Memoir, 2010, etc.), leader of the alternative rock band Throwing Muses, who became close friends with Chesnutt and, as a solo artist, toured with him often. Her book, a combination of memoir and prose poem, is an occasionally cryptic and often oblique elegy for the man with whom she shared many hours onstage and off, touring small venues for little pay where a certain principled indie rock still thrives. Chesnutt, who was paralyzed and used a wheelchair, appears here as cantankerous, outrageous, vulgar, and brilliant; Hersh, whose devotion always triumphs over her exasperation, also emphasizes his moments of kindness and humor. Wisely, the author does not linger on the sound of his music or his two-finger guitar playing—that is best left to the recordings—but she does capture his incessant wordplay and talent for pulling perfectly formed lyrics and melodies seemingly out of the air or, more often, the conversations around him. Chesnutt’s banter—with Hersh, himself, or anyone in earshot—can be quite funny, and even when it borders on inside-joke territory, it makes the author’s account more endearing. But this is hardly a fond remembrance, as Hersh’s portrait of Chesnutt is colored by pain, frustration, and, ultimately, heartbreak. Despite the author’s best efforts, Chesnutt remains a somewhat inscrutable figure—though there is no mistaking the rareness and depth of their friendship.
The book’s great sadness is matched by the skill and vitality of Hersh’s writing; it will make treasured and troubled reading for fans of Chesnutt and the author alike.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-292-75947-3
Page Count: 198
Publisher: Univ. of Texas
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
PROFILES
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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