Poet, lawyer, Librarian of Congress, statesman, and professor, MacLeish (1892-1982) revived the Homeric ideal of a poet as ``a man in the world.'' In this authorized and idealized biography, his only flaws are a demanding nature, many discreet infidelities, and lack of interest in his children. Fortunately, Donaldson (English/William and Mary College) is as successful in celebrating MacLeish's strengths as he has been in tracing the demons that destroyed Cheever (John Cheever, 1988), Fitzgerald, and Hemingway. Born into a wealthy Illinois family, MacLeish attended Yale and Harvard Law, married his childhood sweetheart, and moved to Paris, where he joined the circle around Joyce and Hemingway (his lifelong friend) and, sustained by family resources, devoted himself to poetry. Returning to N.Y.C., he spent the 30's editing and writing for Fortune magazine while producing radio and stage plays (starring the young Orson Welles) that expressed his liberal politics. In the 40's, MacLeish served as the first Librarian of Congress, then as Secretary of State for Cultural Affairs, and, after helping to write the preamble to the UN Charter, worked for UNESCO. Even after accepting a Harvard professorship in 1946, he remained a mediator between the worlds of art and of public life, urging the release of Ezra Pound from his mental asylum and publishing, the day after the first moon landing, a celebratory poem on the front page of The New York Times. MacLeish's last years were spent lecturing, traveling, gathering prizes, entertaining friends (including Richard Burton and Liz Taylor), and writing dramas, as well as private but unrevealing poems about old age, his various affairs, and the bliss he found in his marriage. For such a long and spectacular life, this is a spare and unpretentious biography, like MacLeish's verse. Donaldson is informed, respectful, and comfortable with the many different roles his subject played. He tastefully draws on unpublished verse to illuminate the shadows—but mostly, like MacLeish himself, stays in the light. (Twenty-four pages of b&w photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: May 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-395-49326-9
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1992
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
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
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