A cultural history of Key West as experienced by some of its most famous residents.
McKeen (Journalism/Boston Univ.; Outlaw Journalist: The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson, 2008, etc.) transports readers to Key West, a wonderland of cigar rollers and beautiful women that for generations has maintained a reputation for lawlessness as well. It is also described as "the end of the road, the last outpost for an American original.” Among these Americans originals are a wide array of writers: Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, Jim Harrison, Thomas McGuane and Hunter S. Thompson, as well as musician Jimmy Buffett, whose music set the tone for the town. What begins as a biography of a place soon branches off into mini-biographies of its residents. McKeen holds his gaze longest on McGuane, described as "the most revered writer of his generation.” Yet soon after his arrival, even McGuane became afflicted with the vices of the island, engaging in the excesses of boozing and womanizing that became a trademark for many of the island's better-known inhabitants. "Lust was a legacy of island life,” writes McKeen, a statement McGuane seemed to set out to prove. Equally engaging is the story of Buffett's miraculous rise from "scruffy street singer" to beloved entertainer. Much of his stardom was attributed to his hit single, "Margaritaville," which “bottled up the essence of Key West in an effervescent, maddeningly memorable pop song.” By the end of the book, McKeen also offers his own take on capturing the essence of the place: “Key West is still Key West"—a statement that, while cryptic, seems to somehow say it all. An engrossing tell-all in which Key West's most notable residents struggle to find sanity, sobriety and a place to call home.
Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-307-59200-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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