Both the light and dark sides of the man who made the country both laugh and gag.
A warts-and-all biography of the creator of “Li’l Abner.”
Co-authors Schumacher and Kitchen bring a unique set of tools to their excavations. The former is the biographer of Allen Ginsberg, Eric Clapton, Phil Ochs and, most recently, comic pioneer Will Eisner (Will Eisner: A Dreamer’s Life in Comics, 2010). Kitchen is a cartoonist and publisher—Al Capp’s Complete Shmoo, 2011. From 1934 to 1977, Capp’s “Li’l Abner” strip appeared in hundreds of newspapers. Its creator, born Alfred Caplin in 1909, lost his left leg in a traffic accident at age 9 but soon realized his artistic and humorous talents. He worked for a while with cartoonist Ham Fisher on his “Joe Palooka” feature, but the two fell out and remained bitter competitors for decades. Once “Li’l Abner” began, it took off quickly, and as the authors show, Capp was a master of self-promotion and marketing. Movies and TV shows did not work out too well, but the 1956 eponymous Broadway show was a success, as were a number of his characters, both human (Daisy Mae) and non (the Shmoo). His Sadie Hawkins Day remains a tradition in many schools and colleges, though probably few teens could now identify the source. Capp had a couple of marriages and some family conflicts (especially with brother Bence), but when the 1960s roared in, the formerly liberal Capp veered right and charged high fees to visit college campuses, where he ridiculed student activists and fiercely attacked the left. And it was on some campuses that his libido ended all. Some highly publicized attacks on young women students in his motel rooms cost him both his popularity and his career.
Both the light and dark sides of the man who made the country both laugh and gag.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-60819-623-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Nov. 6, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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