An exemplary work of jazz biography.
Nolan (Ross Macdonald: A Biography, 1999) reconsiders the swing clarinetist-bandleader in a beautifully measured, unforgiving account.
Born Avraham Arshawsky to Jewish immigrant parents, Artie Shaw (1910–2004) taught himself saxophone and clarinet as a boy, dropping out of school at age 15 to pursue music professionally. After apprenticeship with pianist Willie “The Lion” Smith in Harlem’s clubs, network radio work and leadership of a failed big band with strings, Shaw rocketed to the top in 1938 with his version of Cole Porter’s “Begin the Beguine.” That hit and others—“Frenesi,” “Star Dust”—established him as chief rival to “King of Swing” Benny Goodman. Shaw also courageously broke the Swing Era’s rigid race barriers by featuring vocalist Billie Holiday and trumpeter Roy Eldridge. However, the ambivalent bandleader almost immediately began to flee the limelight. He publicly condemned his fans as “morons” and broke up his band at the height of its wild popularity in the first of several professional withdrawals. His incident-rich life encompassed eight marriages—his wives included Hollywood goddesses Lana Turner and Ava Gardner—and many affairs, a wartime tour leading a Navy band in Pacific hot spots and an appearance before HUAC during the Red Scare. He abandoned playing for good in 1954, and lived another 50 years, concentrating mainly on writing. Nolan, who interviewed Shaw and many of his band mates and intimates, appraises his difficult subject with a cool eye. His briskly written work lauds the musician’s instrumental virtuosity and ambitious conceptions, but the author cuts Shaw no slack about his many personal failings—his arrogance, anger, selfishness, egocentricity and his horrific relationships with parents, wives and children. It’s a multidimensional portrait of a brilliant yet self-absorbed autodidact who could never find happiness or satisfaction, even when his greatest fantasies of fame and success were realized.
An exemplary work of jazz biography.Pub Date: May 3, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-393-06201-4
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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