Occasionally displays the author’s characteristic acerbity—but generous to a fault.
A generous, even admiring, biography of the late English poet laureate (1906–84) known for his sing-songy verse (some call it doggerel), his BBC broadcasts, his devotion to the Church of England (despite his unconventional private life) and his determination to save England’s notable older buildings from the wrecking ball.
The prolific Wilson—novelist (My Name Is Legion, 2005, etc.), biographer (Jesus: A Life, 1992, etc.), social historian (After the Victorians, 2005, etc.)—found himself in the news recently when it was revealed that he included in the UK edition of Betjeman a bogus letter (planted by a rival?); the first letters of the sentences in the middle of the letter combine to spell A.N. Wilson is a shit. Betjeman himself would have laughed at the puckishness—but disagreed with the nasty sentiment, for no one could ask for more sympathetic treatment than Wilson has given the poet. Wilson argues that about 30 of Betjeman’s 200 or so published poems “actually hit their mark.” And the author casts a most compassionate light on Betjeman’s intimate relationships. He was married in the 1930s (to Penelope Chetwode) and sired two children, but he also had numerous affairs, including one of some 30 years’ duration with Elizabeth Cavendish. The pudgy poet teetered back and forth between wife and mistress like a tawdry teddy bear. Betjeman did have a remarkably charmed life. One of his secondary-school teachers was T.S. Eliot; his tutor at Oxford was C.S. Lewis (they disliked each other intensely). His little boat eventually floated into some of the most exclusive social waterways—he attended the wedding of Princess Margaret, hung out with celebrities of all sorts. Wilson properly credits Betjeman for his pioneering work with the BBC (early on, he saw and exploited the potential of television) and with the fledgling architectural preservationist movement. Absent here is something essential: a chronology of the poet’s life with a list of his published titles.
Occasionally displays the author’s characteristic acerbity—but generous to a fault.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-374-11198-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 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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