Another footnote to the overflow of Dylan biography.
A look at Bob Dylan from an insider’s perspective promises more than it delivers.
On and off, from the early 1960s to the turn of the century, Victor Maymudes was one of those closest to Dylan for the longest stretches, to the point where the reclusive artist said, “Victor speaks for me!” He sometimes had the title of road manager, but at other times headed security, served as frequent chess partner, secured and designed his personal touring bus, engaged in philosophical, mind-bending conversations, and occasionally allowed himself to suffer humiliation as flunky or worse. “What I needed from Bob, I was more than willing to pay the price for, to have front-row access to his brilliance,” he said on the tapes that form the basis for this posthumous memoir, edited and co-written by his son. The author and Dylan clearly had a complex relationship—though so has anyone who has had any relationship with Dylan. A revelatory book might have resulted from it, but this isn’t it. The major skeleton in the closet turns out to be Victor’s, and there is more about buses and dogs than there is anything new about what makes Dylan tick. At one point, Victor apparently had the idea of “writing a book starring Bob’s personal bus,” perhaps even “narrated from the perspective of Bob’s tour bus,” which would not have been a good idea. Among the interesting bits: Dylan has very bad eyesight but doesn’t wear glasses because his whole world is interior. He hasn’t been involved with many women and prefers them passive. He quit drinking, cold turkey, in 1994. Victor felt deeply conflicted about writing any Dylan book, even after their rift made the lucrative proposition more of a necessity. He died in the process, leaving tapes behind, with the juicier stuff apparently left out.
Another footnote to the overflow of Dylan biography.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2014
ISBN: 978-1250055309
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
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
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
