Thin on insight, but nobody plays a pompous windbag with more authority than Shatner.
The veteran actor shares what he has learned over a long life and a prosperous career.
By now, the voice of Shatner is as familiar on the page (Leonard: My Fifty-Year Friendship with a Remarkable Man, 2016, etc.) as it is from the stage and screen. The questions remain: Is he serious? Or is he in on the joke? Can he really take himself so seriously? Or is he laughing all the way to the bank? “When somebody asks you what it is you are searching for in life, your answer better be passion,” he advises. Fair enough. But later, he elaborates, “mostly, though, I am passionate about continuing to be passionate. The pursuit of passions has influenced every aspect of my life. That has never wavered or changed: I am still in search of the perfect meatball!” Now, at 86, he writes (again) of how his Star Trek comrade Leonard Nimoy was the best friend he has ever had and how he still doesn’t understand why Nimoy refused to speak with him for years before his death. Likewise, “several members of the Star Trek cast have never forgiven me for things I didn’t even know I had done.” His better—or at least less complicated—relationships have come with dogs and horses, and apparently his most satisfying marriage has been to a woman he met through his passion for the latter. He claims that his secret for fulfillment has been, “say yes, yes to life,” and he claims that a working actor should never say no. Yet he recounts the time he declined an invitation to a party at the Kennedy compound (he never says why he was invited) and had to be persuaded to accept a role that had been written expressly for him on the TV series TJ Hooker. Though he suspects that his years are finite, he insists, “I never plan for death; rather, I plan for life.”
Thin on insight, but nobody plays a pompous windbag with more authority than Shatner.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-16669-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
SEEN & HEARD
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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