Finally, the Captain's Log that a zillion Trekkers have been waiting for. This isn't an omnibus Star Trek history. Shatner (a.k.a. Captain Kirk of the USS Enterprise) and Kreski (editorial director of MTV) stick to Stardate mid-1960's and the original TV series, skipping both the Star Trek movies (presumably the subject of a future Shatner memoir) and the multiple series spinoffs. No matter; what remains is a fascinating account of network TV in its post-Beaver, pre-Bunker teenage years. Shatner works against his reputation for hogging the limelight (which he confronts head-on in the final chapter) by remaining off-camera for the first quarter of the text while recounting Gene Roddenberry's early Hollywood career and the making of the pilot, the ``absolutely, incontrovertibly brilliant'' The Cage. Tidbits tumble forth: at first Roddenberry envisioned a Captain Robert April at the helm of the USS Yorktown, with a half-Martian ``satanic'' Mr. Spock at his side. As the high concept took flesh, a fight arose among studio executives over Spock: How important should he be? What should his ears look like?— questions that attained even greater importance when, to everyone's bewilderment, the mind-melding Vulcan bested Kirk as the focus of the Trekker cult. Soon the rest of the cast signed on, along with ace producer Gene Coon, whom Shatner praises to the detriment of icon Roddenberry: ``Roddenberry created Star Trek, and Coon made it fly.'' Shatner's favorite program (``The Devil in the Dark''), Leonard Nimoy's clashes with management, why laser-guns became ``phasers'': there's enough here to satiate the most avid Trekker, delivered with pop and pizazz. After just three years, a tired cast called it quits, or so they thought. Today, Star Trek prospers, and so will this memoir- -most probably at warp speed. (``Over 130 never-before-seen photographs''—not seen)
Pub Date: Oct. 27, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-017734-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1993
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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