It is unimaginable that any life of Cooper will surpass this fascinating book.
The second volume of a majestic biography covers the 19th-century author’s most productive decades.
In 1826, Cooper (1789-1851) and his family sailed to Europe, where they traveled for the next seven years before returning to America in 1833. Franklin (English/Univ. of Connecticut; James Fenimore Cooper: The Early Years, 2007, etc.) begins his engrossing, sharply perceptive narrative with this sojourn, which proved crucial in shaping Cooper’s artistic aims, professional identity, and political views for the next quarter century. Despite recent successes, the author of The Last of the Mohicans, published just before he left America, was never certain that literature was a viable means of support, and Franklin focuses on Cooper’s ongoing efforts to manage the complex and often stressful business of writing. He provides a rich personal, cultural, and political context for all of Cooper’s work, including plans that never came to fruition. Cooper could be a difficult man—“urbanity is not his forte,” one acquaintance remarked—and his opinions on politics and religion incited some virulent responses. A staunch defender of the American republic against European detractors, Cooper evolved into a critic of what he saw as oligarchic values: “money is a bad foundation for power,” he announced. While in Europe, wounded by critical attacks in the press, Cooper announced that he was giving up writing fiction entirely. But he did not: he needed the income, Franklin says, and the rhythm of his life revolved around writing. Moreover, he had become so deeply “a fixture of the national imaginary” that his countrymen “would not consent” to his giving up. Prolific and apparently tireless, he incorporated political critique into many of his later novels. Even as the literary marketplace changed, Cooper “remained a vital force.” Franklin’s erudition is astonishing: his sources afford him an intimacy that is rare in any biography, and yet his voice is modest and even speculative at times. He does not pretend to know more than what is possible. Nevertheless, this is a masterful biography that well deserves to be called definitive.
It is unimaginable that any life of Cooper will surpass this fascinating book.Pub Date: April 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-300-13571-8
Page Count: 832
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
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
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