A lean and angry work, anchored by a mellowing sense of self-discovery.
Pekar digs deep into his childhood to find the roots of his desperate fear of failure.
Anyone who’s read even a few pages of Pekar’s voluminous ongoing graphic biography, American Splendor, knows that they’re not dealing with a happy man. What they might be a little taken aback to learn, after reading this book, is just how exceptionally angry he is. This is a guy who grew up using his fists almost as often as his tirade-prone mouth. Given a bright, dramatic graphic treatment by Haspiel, this depicts Pekar growing up after World War II in Mount Pleasant, a Jewish and Italian Cleveland neighborhood that was becoming predominantly African-American. Pekar, just about the only white kid on the street, routinely gets into street fights. By the time he gets to high school, far from developing a sensitive artistic temperament, all he wants is to be a fighter, and he goes out of his way looking for guys to wallop. At the same time, his crippling insecurities start to take hold, and he begins to sabotage himself time and again, all to avoid failure. Once out in the working world, he keeps screwing around and acting the clown, behavior that could come as a surprise to those familiar only with his more dour later work (Pekar, it seems, wasn’t always a grumpy old man). Eventually, the more familiar elements of his life are brought together: the brief flirtation with beatnik hipsterdom, the series of dead-end jobs, the continual, torturous worry about money and respect. It’s all handled with Pekar’s usual self-mocking, breezy forthrightness, as though he’s got no time to mess around by playing nice. One frame shows him peering anxiously into his mailbox, wondering, “Boy, I’d a thought someone would’ve written me a letter about my new book by now.”
A lean and angry work, anchored by a mellowing sense of self-discovery.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2005
ISBN: 1-4012-0399-X
Page Count: 104
Publisher: Vertigo/DC Comics
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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