Lebrecht takes on a fascinating topic, but his attempt results in a disorienting formal hodgepodge.
Music critic Lebrecht (The Life and Death of Classical Music: Featuring the 100 Best and 20 Worst Recordings Ever Made, 2007, etc.) pens an extended love letter to the composer whose majestic symphonies and brooding vocal works have become almost sacrosanct in the contemporary concert hall.
This book will appeal to Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) enthusiasts who share the author’s tendency toward unabashed hyperbole—read no further than the subtitle. Lebrecht’s penchant for exaggerating the role played by the classical music tradition in Western culture permeates this latest work, as it has throughout much of his previous writing. Yet the author’s premise is worthy of consideration: How do we account for the rise in Mahler’s popularity since Leonard Bernstein almost singlehandedly initiated a Mahler Renaissance in the 1960s? Though Lebrecht doesn’t provide a definitive answer, he does offer an ample introduction to the composer. As part biography, part gonzo journalism and part confessional, the book seems unnecessarily confusing. The most compelling sections, which chronologically trace Mahler’s biography, are tainted by Lebrecht’s decision to write in the present tense. Likewise, many of the sections within the biographical portion of the book jump to tenuously related anecdotes from the present just as the narrative settles into a more comfortable rhythm. Lebrecht writes with appealing detail, however, filling in the crevices of his subject's life with adages and impressions about Mahler conveyed through the letters and reminiscences of those who knew him. Consequently, the author richly animates Mahler as the moody, self-obsessive and tragic figure he seems to have been. The book also includes interviews with surviving family members and accounts of the author’s pilgrimages to important Mahler sites.
Lebrecht takes on a fascinating topic, but his attempt results in a disorienting formal hodgepodge.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-375-42381-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2010
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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