Strong, wonderfully absorbing life of Beat bard Allen Ginsberg (b. 1926) that breaks new ground in its critical analyses of the poet's work; by Schumacher (Reasons to Believe, 1988—not reviewed). Readers might think that after Barry Miles's massive and masterful Ginsberg (1989), an equally massive biography coming so closely behind is more than one has the stamina for—but no. Schumacher goes over the same events in Ginsberg's life as Miles did, and does so with an intelligence that bonds us to the emotionally battered poet. Unlike Miles, he cuts off his biography in 1980: The bulk of Ginsberg's major works had appeared by then (one should have 1985's Collected Poems at hand to follow the critical argument). Also, unlike Miles, Schumacher uses few interviews, hoping to avoid mythologizing by going to original sources contemporary with the events described—largely collected archives of Ginsbergiana and Ginsberg's voluminous letters and journals kept from childhood, which form a vivid autobiography of events as they happened. Ginsberg's genie sprang from the marriage of his poet father and mad mother—a wildly outspoken radical—and was unstoppered by Blake, Whitman, William Carlos Williams, and Jack Kerouac's spontaneous bop prosody. The young poet found his voice in ``Howl''—and what a voice it was. Schumacher takes us through the poem's drafts until it was shaped and given its final verbal lift and meticulously forceful imitation of spontaneity. One is struck time and again by Ginsberg's originality and the richly surreal syntax that opens doors to his most private experience. His Buddhism, raids on the political establishment, and Beat friends Kerouac, William Burroughs, Gary Snyder, Gregory Corso, et al. get full treatment, as do his gay love affairs, especially with mainly heterosexual Peter Orlovsky. Ginsberg's bottomless aid to the bedeviled, learned in childhood, is stunning. Rings the doorbell on your heart, your brain, and your love of great verse. (Sixteen pages of b&w photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-312-08179-0
Page Count: 752
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1992
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
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s...
Music journalist and musician Wald (Talking 'Bout Your Mama: The Dozens, Snaps, and the Deep Roots of Rap, 2014, etc.) focuses on one evening in music history to explain the evolution of contemporary music, especially folk, blues, and rock.
The date of that evening is July 25, 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival, where there was an unbelievably unexpected occurrence: singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, already a living legend in his early 20s, overriding the acoustic music that made him famous in favor of electronically based music, causing reactions ranging from adoration to intense resentment among other musicians, DJs, and record buyers. Dylan has told his own stories (those stories vary because that’s Dylan’s character), and plenty of other music journalists have explored the Dylan phenomenon. What sets Wald's book apart is his laser focus on that one date. The detailed recounting of what did and did not occur on stage and in the audience that night contains contradictory evidence sorted skillfully by the author. He offers a wealth of context; in fact, his account of Dylan's stage appearance does not arrive until 250 pages in. The author cites dozens of sources, well-known and otherwise, but the key storylines, other than Dylan, involve acoustic folk music guru Pete Seeger and the rich history of the Newport festival, a history that had created expectations smashed by Dylan. Furthermore, the appearances on the pages by other musicians—e.g., Joan Baez, the Weaver, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Dave Van Ronk, and Gordon Lightfoot—give the book enough of an expansive feel. Wald's personal knowledge seems encyclopedic, and his endnotes show how he ranged far beyond personal knowledge to produce the book.
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s personal feelings about Dylan's music or persona.Pub Date: July 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236668-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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