Hilarious collection of letters by the Russian-American maestro that must rank as one of the most contentious and eccentric of all time. While there are no hefty literary gems here—Nabokov's letters tend to be small, albeit glittery with intelligence, gleaming with style—fans of perverse masterpieces like Lolita and Ada won't be disappointed. Nabokov loved to duel, frolic, and tease. Consider his evaluations of Dr. Zhivago ("that trashy, melodramatic, false and inept book") and Robert Lowell ("l do not mind Robert Lowell's disliking my books, but I wish he would stop mutilating his betters—Mandelshtam, Rimbaud, and others. I regret not having entitled my article 'Rhyme and Punishment'"). Or his response when asked what he'd like Neil Armstrong to say on the moon: "I want a lump in his throat to obstruct the wisecrack." Or the jingle he sent in unsolicited to the Burma-Shave company: "He passed two cars; then five; then seven;/and then he beat them all to Heaven." Other letters skirt the edge of his massive war with Edmund Wilson (the main battles don't see print here); detail his run-ins with prudes over the publication of Lolita; trace his triple careers as lepidopterist, novelist, professor. Even his political naivet‚ acquires in hindsight a certain quaint charm, as in this 1965 telegram to an ailing President Johnson: "Wishing you a perfect recovery and a speedy return to the admirable work you are accomplishing." All in all, the portrait emerges of a brilliant, fussy, combative iconoclast who adopted a literary persona (filled with laughter, thank goodness) at an early age and never afterwards dropped his mask. Devilish and baroque. In other words, classic Nabokov.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1989
ISBN: 0156936100
Page Count: 624
Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1989
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
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