The author’s detractors will likely find fault, but this is a fitting cap to a sui generis career, equally satisfying in...
The first memoir from the idiosyncratic novelist, who claims that if “it doesn’t read like a normal memoir, that may be because I haven’t exactly led what most normal people would consider a normal life.”
Indeed. The narrative—comprised of a series of vignettes from various points in the author’s eventful life and appropriately spiked with deliciously mischievous language and philosophical musings—may be “somewhat subject to the effects of mnemonic erosion,” but it is piquant and intriguing nonetheless. In roughly chronological order, Robbins (B Is for Beer, 2009, etc.) covers his childhood in Blowing Rock, N.C.; his move to and residence in Richmond, Va., in which he discovered and thrived in the one enclave in town not considered ultraconservative; his time at Hargrave Military Academy and two years at Washington and Lee; his experiences in the Air Force as a meteorologist in Korea and at Strategic Air Command in Nebraska; his post at the Richmond Times-Dispatch; his move to Seattle and eventual assumption of the position of arts critic at the Seattle Times; and his brush with the FBI, who thought he might have been the Unabomber. As can be expected from Robbins, each short section is subject to digressions and thoughtful pauses, only a few of which linger a bit too long. His chronicle of the writing and publication of Another Roadside Attraction (1971) does not occur until nearly halfway through the book, and the author glides through the rest of his oeuvre (Still Life with Woodpecker, Jitterbug Perfume et al.) with less reflection. Most readers, even die-hard Robbins fans, won’t mind, however. They will enjoy this peek into the intelligently goofy and always fertile mind of this inventive writer, who riffs on everything from women and drugs to the publishing industry, conceptions of spirituality and the countless culinary wonders of kimchi.
The author’s detractors will likely find fault, but this is a fitting cap to a sui generis career, equally satisfying in short installments or read straight through.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-226740-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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