Roth has used the relationship between his life and art in a gimmicky way in his fiction, and even his brutal memoir The Facts (1988) was not free of this defect. Now, however, he discards all the artifices in this searing account of his 86-year-old father's physical decline and death. "You must not forget anything," Roth admonishes himself at the end of this father-and-son tale, and indeed, from the detail accumulated here, one doubts that his eye, unerring ear, and memory have missed a thing. Misdiagnosed at first as having a viral infection that caused temporary paralysis to one side of the face, father Herman Roth soon learned the bleaker truth: he had a brain tumor. As this once-vigorous retired Newark insurance manager refused to go gentle into that good night, Philip watched with mingled awe and fear. The only respites from this harrowing procession of bodily disasters—including diminished eyesight and incontinence—are flashbacks that provide fascinating glimpses into American Jewish life in the first half of this century—as well as into Roth père, a blunt perfectionist who sometimes drove his late wife, children, and loved ones to distraction (after being advised of the need for an operation, Herman lashes out at his long-suffering companion for not opening a can of soup correctly). Even before Philip has his own terrifying brush with death in an emergency quintuple bypass operation, he realizes that his father taught and embodied "the vernacular, unpoetic and unexpressive and point-blank, with all the vernacular's glaring limitations and all its durable force." An elegy of overwhelming horror and pity—filled with Roth's graceful prose and narrative control, but also with a humanity sometimes missing in his other work.
Pub Date: Feb. 11, 1990
ISBN: 0679752935
Page Count: 238
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1990
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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