For creative types, Friedman takes the pressure off, redefining success in more ways than reaching the limelight.
A writer and former violist examines the delicate divide between giving up on a dream and moving forward.
When she was 11, Friedman (The Good Girl's Guide to Getting Lost: A Memoir of Three Continents, Two Friends, and One Unexpected Adventure, 2011) attended summer camp at the prestigious Interlochen Center for the Arts, which “stoked…an ambition to achieve musical greatness.” Years later, she abandoned the musical path she’d thought would propel her to glory and turned to writing. Dismayed by her “failed potential,” she interviewed her Interlochen classmates to learn where their ambitions led. Conversational anecdotes, memories, popular science, research on creativity, and a medley of quotes from Joan Didion, J.K. Rowling, and others form an intriguing, sometimes-indulgent exploration of talent and expectation. Why some people combine ability, luck, grit, and opportunity to break away from the pack while others quit remains unanswerable, but Friedman explores the topic with an appealing mix of trepidation and curiosity. Once a fan of the myth that true "art monsters" are single-minded individuals who sacrifice everything for the sake of mastery, the author encountered adults whose quieter pursuits challenged her conception of contentment. From a high school music teacher who balances creativity with family life to a scriptwriter who doesn’t equate the time he spends working with what he gets in return to a dancer-turned–Pilates instructor, her classmates paint a mature alternative to the winner-take-all view of a fruitful life. Though they often dwell on self-criticism, Friedman’s reflections on her own zigzagging journey are striking and raw. The author chronicles familiar doubts and daydreams on alternative futures with a bemused tone that changes over time. Sections on social media's tendency to fuel comparisons add tension to already heavy ideals. When the author finds that an ordinary life after a precocious start is fine, it’s anticlimactic but palpably relieving.
For creative types, Friedman takes the pressure off, redefining success in more ways than reaching the limelight.Pub Date: Dec. 31, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-14-313212-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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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