The autobiography, much of which may be factual, of a dirty old man, illustrated with x-rated photos. You may want to wash...
The unsavory, wild adventures of the man who made his fortune delivering pornography to the American mass market, the former King of Smut, now destitute, dependent on lithium, Social Security and the kindness of strangers.
Back in the day, before the Internet made his special product available to everybody at the click of a mouse, Goldstein was a seminal figure in the industry. No dirty place was too far for his pulp magazine, Screw, to travel. Some called it liberal, countercultural, a trumpet for freedom, while others simply called it filth. Clearly, both were right. Screw embodied a special art form presenting schoolyard humor that featured naughty words, muddy photographs and explicit artwork, all as thoroughly offensive as intended. The periodical was first sold, Goldstein says, by blind newsstand operators. The publisher made millions. He wallowed in the unrelenting potty talk—he still does—and reveled in the nonstop sexual play, which he remembers fondly in his account of a unique life. Goldstein’s story is a chronicle of his appetites for expensive watches, sweet revenge, cigars, pastrami and, foremost, sex organs. It is populated by a lot of porn stars, scum-peddlers, lubricious whores, faithless wives and one disloyal son. (His own father was a “putz.”) Included are pop-culture figures like Walter Winchell, Larry Flynt and Linda Lovelace, friendly restaurateurs, slick lawyers, actor-murderers and made guys. Our hero got a rise out of the citizenry; he was jailed and, finally, forgotten and abandoned by old comrades in the sex business. Screw shut down in 2003 after 35 years and 1,800 issues. Now, Goldstein is a tired scalawag, a corpulent old lion, toothlessly gnawing old bones. Without his wealth or health, Goldstein retains his talent for lewdness.
The autobiography, much of which may be factual, of a dirty old man, illustrated with x-rated photos. You may want to wash your hands after handling this one.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2006
ISBN: 1-56025-868-3
Page Count: 296
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2006
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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