No comments about Gothic Art (Art of Century) (Art of Century).

5 comments about Boy with Loaded Gun: A Memoir.

1. Lewis Nordan is superior prose stylist, and his memoir BOY WITH LOADED GUN--which he describes in the preface as a mingling of fact and fancy--presents the reader with a series of scenes from a life that both collapses and then reconstructs through a combination of personal compulsion and unexpectedly sharp (and often humorous) encounters with life and death.

   An extremely episodic work, BOY WITH LOADED GUN is divided into three portions, the first detailing Nordan's childhood in Itta Bena, Mississippi; the second his youth, first marriage, and rising alcoholism; and the third his painful recovery--complete with set-backs--from a life-time of self-destructive compulsion. The most successful of these portions is the first. Nordan effortlessly captures the eccentricties of growing up in post-war in prose that bespeaks the South in every aspect, and if BOY WITH LOADED GUN consisted of this portion only it would still find a special niche among the best of Southern belles lettres.

   But life does not end with childhood, and the remainder of the book follows Nordon's life as it first unravels and then as he attempts (with many a set back) to knit it up again. Just as Nordan was unable to organize these portions of his life in the living, so is he unable to organize them on the page, and although the work remains stylistically flawless it becomes so extremely episodic that it lacks focus. After making such a long and frequently painful journey through Nordan's life, I expected him to offer a cummulative statement that would bring the diverse elements of his memoir into focus as the book neared its conclusion. But there is none--and this undercuts any sense of purpose the book might have. It is beautifully written, but there seems little point to it beyond writing beautifully.

   Several [people] have suggested that Nordan is the "next William Faulkner." I can only assume these [people] have never read William Faulkner, for neither Nordan's style nor his material is remotely like anything Faulkner ever wrote. In tone of voice, however, Nordan does recall such authors as Eudora Welty and Harper Lee--particularly when writing of his childhood.




2. In a world where everyone who ever endured a three-day suspension from middle school writes a histrionic tell-all memoir, it's a deep pleasure to read a memoir that fills what ought to be the requirements for any: 1. the experiences described are truly memorable; and 2. the book is written by a gifted writer who obviously does his work.

   I say from now on unless both requirements are met, don't read the memoir.

   Read this one.




3. This was the first I had read of Lewis Nordan, and I wasn't overly impressed.

   I whipped through the first section about his (or should I say "Buddy's") childhood. After that, the book slows down. It becomes increasingly difficult to identify or sympathize with the problems and eccentricities of this young man as he comes of age. Buddy consistently fails to learn from his mistakes and the lack of growth is frustrating as a reader.

   Still, I'll probably pick up another Nordan book to see if I like it any better.




4. Lewis "Buddy" Nordan writes a memoir -- sort of.

   Often times his memoir reads like a tell-all tale, and at other times like a novel about Nordan himself. The line between fact and fiction is rather hard to ascertain. Boy with Loaded Gun is difficult to pigeonhole into any traditional classification. However, fans will be pleased and new readers will be amazed with his eighth book.

   Nordan confesses to cooking up conversations, changing names, and exaggerating. What's left is an immanently readable, laugh your head right off, story about growing up in the Mississippi Delta town of Itta Bena and the haywire adulthood Nordan lived upon leaving Mississippi in the 1940s and 50s.

   For Nordan aficionados, the book touches on the perennial themes of his fiction. Beginning with his first collection of short stories published by LSU Press in 1983 Welcome to the Arrow-Catcher Fair, to his most recent novel Lighting Song, loneliness and grief take center stage, along with a double helping of alcoholism, fantasy, and a Gothic sense of doom and loss.

   What makes Nordan's writing engaging is a sense of redemption. His characters are on a quest somewhat like the wayfarers Louisiana novelist Walker Percy wrote about. For Nordan, humor makes suffering and pain bearable.

   The memoir begins with the early death of his father when Nordan was a baby. Soon his mother would remarry, this time to a drunk. Nordan's stepfather came home each day from work to retire to his bedroom, where he would drink beer until sleep. Each morning he'd awake to ritual puking. Unfortunately, Nordan followed in his stepfather's footsteps.

   He was a bizarre teen, one often obsessed with sex and other fantasies. As a teenager, Nordan ordered a military surplus pistol from the back pages of a magazine and attempted to bushwhack his stepfather in cold blood. The gun mysteriously jammed; thus saving the boy from murder and providing a title for the book.

   After a stint in the Navy, Nordan attended the Methodist Millsaps College in Jackson, where he found easy sex in the parking lot outside the women's dormitory. He and his partner quickly and ludicrously eloped. In graduate school, he bummed around with hippies, did drugs, lived on a farm, and had illicit trysts with the first real hippie he met. This was a life far removed from the confines of Itta Bena, though his departure wasn't far from the rural South. Dissipation, it seems, can be found in the remotest hamlets of the Bible Belt, even around Auburn, Alabama, where he studied for the Ph.D. in English.

   The memoir has all the components of a good southern novel. It's sprinkled with drunkards, midgets, racial angst over the Emmett Till lynching, pathological liars, sexual perversion, and even an unclaimed corpse that is kept on display for several decades at a Mississippi funeral home.

   In one of the book's saddest moments, Nordan's college-aged son committed suicide. Years earlier, a child by his first wife died at birth. Perhaps the suicide served as a catalyst for the author to finally grow up. It appears that Nordan eventually learned to take responsibility and to call his grief by name.

   The story ends with a surreal book tour stop in New Orleans, the land of dreamy dreams. By then Nordan was a published author and teacher of creative writing at the University of Pittsburgh, remarried and reconciled with wife number two, and on the wagon.

   Readers may learn more than they wish about the real Buddy Nordan.

   No, readers will love this book, and not just long-time Nordan fans. They won't love it because of his now public failures, but because he's got the guts to tell the tale, and because of the life-affirming laughter in every page. As always, Nordan writes beautifully, even if he had to jumble up the facts to avoid being sued.

   -------------Reviewed by Dayne Sherman




5. Lewis Nordan is undoubtedly an excellent writer. He has also had an "interesting" if somewhat dysfunctional life. He shares with the reader selected
   parts fo that interesting life. Several tales are indeed memorable. However, he doesn't seem to have an appreciation of when things might best remain untold. In reading the book and its at times startling admissions, I was at times repulsed. The good parts way outweigh the bad. So, I'd recommend it, especialy for Nordan's fans, but be prepared to be shocked.

1 comments about Ross Perot: The Man Behind the Myth.

1. Col. James Bo Gritz was. Why he didn't get
   on the bandwagon of Bo, or vise-versa is
   one of the biggest mysteries in third party
   history, since they both worked covertly and
   together on bringing home our P.O.W.s and
   M.I.A.s during tht years 1985-87! This was
   originally Clint Eastwood's project, when he
   contributed $30,000 for the rights to get the
   story he wanted to do a movie on. But after-
   wards, Perot, who got his own people out of
   Iran, in '83, got Bo into and out of SE Asia
   twice in the middle '80's after Perot accused
   Bush of flubbing on Reagan's original number
   one campaign promise of 1980. But when the
   bright lights got on Perot in '92, he wilted
   after Bush the Elder (father of 90 I.Q. idiot
   presently @ 1600 Penn. Avg.) threatened to
   wreck Perot's daughter's wedding. Perot, how-
   ever did a good job with his economic graphs,
   et, al. This book details some of Perot's
   stronger points, though it doesn't endorse
   him. Better than a lot of other books the
   Establishment put out to smear him, however.

1 comments about Mariquita Sanchez (Historia).

1. Un excelente ejemplo de como se puede escribir un libro de historia de forma amena, accesible al no especializado en el tema, pero manteniendo rigurosidad y detalle en la documentación y las fuentes. Realmente un libro muy válido para quienes estén interesados tanto en el personaje, ciertamente interesantísimo, como el las costumbres y entreveros políticos argentinos desde la época virreinal hasta la presidencia de Sarmiento.

5 comments about His Way: The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra.

1. I read this bound piece of trash twenty years ago. I thought it was nothing but a steaming, stinking pile of lies and over-the-top exaggerations. Time has shown that the author, Kitty Kelley, is a hateful smear mistress lacking the least bit of integrity and decency.
   
   All you will get from this book besides the outright lies are hearsay and rumors.
   According to Kelley, Sinatra was nothing but a spoiled brat and bullying coward who relied on thugs to get what he wanted.
   She tells us he brought home prostitutes and tried to force his first wife, Nancy, into threesomes with them. We read about a mafia hit on a smalltown sheriff whose wife was being screwed by Ol' Blue Eyes. Then there is the tale of a hot pot of fresh coffee which Sinatra launched at his longtime valet's face. Do you get the idea of what this book is all about?
   HIS WAY is typical Kitty Kelley, epitomizing her level and ability as a writer and a human being.
   
   Sinatra had many faults but they were vastly outnumbered by his virtues.



2. This was evidently meant to be a commentary on the life and hates of Frank Sinatra. It was probably meant to be quite a character study - connect the dots between all the revolting facts coldly listed here and you find a revolting human being. If the dots don't quite come together, as they didn't for me, you find a rather different connotation. The solemn quote at the beginning delineates the difference between reputation and character. Ms.Kelley, being the all-knowing Author, gets right into her examination into Mr. Sinatra's character behind the reputation with a cold first chapter related in frankly impossible detail. From then on Sinatra is shown to be callous, pathetic, weak, vicious, brutal, abusive, crude, egomaniacal, vindictive, and quite possibly crazy in an overwhelming documentary that seems very fond of the two words "Sinatra screamed" and any reference to any weakness known to man that Sinatra allegedly possessed. In a cold, stark, very nearly cruel style interviews with disgruntled former employees, wives of friends, gangsters, yes-men, Hoboken tattle-tales, discarded girlfriends, two-bit comics, technicians, and the slimy Peter Lawford are all displayed in 633 pages of rot. The skeletal overview of Mr. Sinatra's life is almost frighteningly calculated - any unscrupulous writer can pick and choose to their heart's content while still remaining truthful, and Ms. Kelley could write a book about her inimitable art of relating only the least flattering information and blaming her digustingly biased view on outraged virtue.
   Every character in this organized assasination, as a matter of fact, appears to be a good little human being, abused and cruelly rejected by Frank Sinatra, doing their sad duty to let the world know Sinatra done 'em wrong. Appears. Ms. Kelley apparentely agrees with them. Their sympathetically related tales are the backbone of the biography.
   I have no idea how Kitty Kelley and several other Sinatra biographers are so blind that they have never been able to locate one positive Sinatra review in their life. In this book, if no bad review exists for a movie, record, concert, TV show, ect., it is either ignored or used to promote another example of bad behavior backstage. I know all the good reviews exist. I've read them, and it always surprised me because according to Kelley and other pick-and-choosers the perfomance was lousy. But this is not about a career, it's said; it's about a life. Then why mention any reviews at all?
   If all the names mentioned in here actually said Sinatra was an awful person, I just might believe it. But they didn't. The uncomplimentary comments used are in any other source buried in an avalanche of rave reviews and praise. Ms.Kelley, of coure, the St. Bernard of literature, sniffed them out. Ava Gardner's autobiography paints a very different portrait of what she felt about Mr.Sinatra than the few harsh statements here. Lauren Bacall's "By Myself" is so often negatively interpreted it's ridiculous, and Ms. Kelley joins the long line of misinterpreters. Rare comments by Frank Sinatra Jr., Sammy Davis and others are gleefully repeated, despite the fact that their opinions about Mr.Sinatra are almost always positive to the extreme. No famous friends of his were interviewed, simply because people who genuinely loved him went as high as the summit of upper-class Hollywood, nobility, and the White House, and that was the type of thing Kelley wanted least. I read an interview in which Ms. Kelley supposedly said she didn't find Sinatra appealing because he had no sense of humor. Ha. There has never been anyone with as little humor about them as Ms.Kitty Kelley, executioner of reputation, fabricater of character. The sense of smug gloating, the nasty smirking of the authoress over Mr.Sinatra's discomfort at having so many people read this trash and BELIEVE it, is the only humor evident, and that makes me sick. Even if every statement were true, I'd still have a certain sympathy for Frank Sinatra, because, as it eventually becomes clear, you learn less than nothing about what Sinatra was really like, but you learn a great deal about the writer. The Sinatra story displayed is all probably untrue reputation, but Ms.Kelley's scheme for hurting him backfired - her character is evident. The preface says,''Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us." True.



3. This is a lengthy look at the shadows in Sinatra's personality, and is not the one to read if you are interested in how he developed his approach to singing so well. Frank appears to have been a victim of what we now call bipolar disorder, back in the days when no effective medications existed for it except alcohol and nicotine. He sank into scary depressions, and soared into wild bouts of manic activity, exhibited both grandiosity and generosity in excess, supported violence against his enemies and often uncritical acceptance of his friends. He grew up with a passive dad and a forceful but not likable mom, was a spoiled child who sometimes was a victim of discrimination due to his Italian heritage, and developed such an intense drive to be successful that he frequently drove away the people who might have been best for him. Upon finishing this gossipy yet apparently truthful biography, I didn't want Frank as a friend, but I didn't give away any of my dozen CD's, either. Sometimes one has to divorce the artist from the person in order to remain a fan.



4. I'm only writing this review because there are those who think this book contains the "truth" about Sinatra. Think about this, someone who doesn't like you much decides to write a book about you, they find all the people throughout your life that hate you, you have had fights with, don't speak to anymore, or you just don't really like. They ignore anyone who has good things to say or your long time friends and family. They interview them and write the book containing all their quotes, stating its factual, after all people did say these things - right!! Now think about how that would make you look, would it represent the truth about you- i don't think so. This is pure unadulterated garbage, from a twisted viewpoint and not worth the paper its printed on. Did Sinatra have some dark moments, i guess so - but this is not the place to find out about them.



5. Admittedly Frank Sinatra had an extraordinarily rich and interesting life, but one much too full of details for a single book. So in this rendition of his life, the reader is left to ask the question: how many, hook-ups, breakup, screw-ups, jam-ups, and mob-ups can a story have before it goes well past being well-told, into a whole other zone of being just plain incoherent gossip?
   
   One would think that of all people who should know where this mark in the sand lies, it would be Kitty Kelly? Yet, in this biography, Kelly, who is normally so good at culling the low hanging fruit from the rumor mill and gossip trees and turning them into a tasty and sometimes even a succulent wine, this time, gets it so wrong. She seems to have fouled up the fermentation process altogether and gone well past coherence into a whole new zone of vinegar, all the way past Go into complete incoherence.
   
   There are just way too many repetitious unnecessary details, vignettes, spats, breakup and irrelevances to make this a well-rounded, coherent and interesting story. Some of the details, which after a while just start falling all over each other, simply should have been relegated to footnotes, mentioned in passing, or left out altogether. In the interest of "tightness" and coherence, Kelly, more than anyone, should know that more is not always better. Sometimes unorganized details in a manuscript can overpower the story. As is the case here, they cannot even be tamed by forcing them into a "Procrustean Bed" of the author's own making. Kelly knows, all to well that details must be sorted, selected and ever so carefully placed so that through organization alone, they are allowed to tell their own story. Here, it seemed that Kelly, just as she accuses her subject of doing in the manuscript, allowed her own enthusiasm to get well ahead of her keen sense of organization and storytelling. What a pity: so much material, so little time.
   
   Despite this, one can reassemble this jigsaw puzzle of "way too many pieces" into a mosaic beneath the clutter to get at a reasonable psychological portrait of Frank Sinatra, and still be able to see that he was pretty much handicapped at birth: Accidentally misnamed; an only child; collar-flowered ears, a busted eardrum, skinny and slight of stature. Add to this that he had only a smattering of talent, in a heavily male dominated culture and you get at an early age, a personality blanketed with deeply rooted insecurities.
   
   But these were nothing compared to the "trip his mother put on him" to heighten these congenital insecurities. She was overbearing and over-protective, dressed him like a girl and spoiled him. And then, as this his most powerful role model and ally through life, provided him a very poor example of adult humanity. Dolly Sinatra was the dynamo of the family: the matron and breadwinner, who cursed in technicolor, always dabbled over the edge of legalities, including being jailed multiple times for running an illegal abortion clinic, and for her prohibition era Speakeasy activities. The fact that Frank's father was present, but missing in action: a virtual "nobody" who deferred to his mother, pretty much sealed his psychological fate: Little Frankie had no chance of evolving into a normal well-balanced adult.
   
   What Frank Sinatra had going for him was a very contradictory self-destructive kind of self-confidence spawn mostly out of fantasy and denial. It was one that bordered on unwarranted arrogance, fits of uncontrolled anger, depressive spins, hovering on the rim of immorality and illegality, and leaving him with an empty emotional reservoir. Throughout his life he was little more than an insecure bully with an average voice. Yet he used bullying to his advantage, and as a weapon to "club his way" through life.
   
   And as life would have it, after many inevitable "ups-and-downs," failures and come backs, shattered and scattered love affairs--especially with Ava Gardner -- he became a raving financial and professional success, but an utter moral, personal and human failure. End of story.
   
   Five stars for the research, two for the organization; three for the book.

No comments about All the Gold in California: And Other Places, People, & Things.

No comments about Ernest Hemingway - The Writer and the Sea (Biography).

No comments about Arnold Schwarzenegger - The Governator (Biography).

2 comments about Secrets of a Jeweler.

1. I'm happy to say that author Izzy Heller and his remarkable wife, Zelda, are close friends of mine. So I had heard one or two of Izzy's delicious tales even before I read "Secrets of a Jeweler." Of course, the written word can be chewed, then re-chewed, then chewed again, to get every ounce of flavor from its pages. That's why Izzy's collection of anecdotes is such a treat. Drawing from the suburbs of the Nation's Capital, the homes of the rich and famous, Izzy has assembled a series of yarns -- almost too entertaining to be true. For nearly a quarter of a century, he was jeweler to the powerful, the wannabe-powerful, and a few charlatans drawn to the powerful. The result: An interesting, informative, and sometimes poignant picture of what makes the bejeweled class tick -- their work and pleasure, their foibles and indiscretions, and most of all, their personalities as reflected by their baubles and gems.
   
   Sprinkled with news clips, photos, and other illustrative material, "Secrets of a Jeweler" is part gossip, part history, and part autobiography. Yet it's also a primer on the diamond trade and a discourse on business ethics -- all from the perspective of a successful retailer who understood that the customer is king. You'll read about con men and petty thieves, followed in a page or two by accounts of corporate moguls, celebrities, politicians, even royalty. And interwoven throughout is the saga of Izzy's wonderful family and their migration from South Africa to America.
   
   If you missed the terrific Apartheid-era novel, "Deadly Truth," co-authored by Izzy and Zelda Heller, now's your chance to enjoy Izzy's second effort -- an easy and engaging read about the life and good times of an extraordinary gentleman.



2. 
   The gems within Secrets of a Jeweler have less to do with diamonds and other fine stones with which author Izzy Heller has plied his trade for 25 years in the Nation's Capital - but more the crystallization of his multi-faceted, precious tales about his early prosperous life in South Africa as owner of a grain milling company and his wife Zelda's talents as a renowned antique dealer, the family's struggles against apartheid, and their painful decision to leave behind their homeland, assets, and aging parents to re-establish themselves a continent away. "Perhaps if we had really known the trauma of the emigrant," he writes, "we would have stayed at home."
   
   But they didn't. Instead, the Hellers - in mid-life - put down new roots in Washington. They went back to school, made new friends, became the nucleus for relatives near and far, and opened a prestigious jewelry and antique silver shop - reemerging as confidantes to the power elite and attracting clients who relished in Victorian, Edwardian, and Georgian treasures as well as handsome Art Deco to contemporary pieces. Offered to the public were Paul Revere teapots to Picasso silver plates, a 40-carat yellow diamond ring, Russian objects by Fabergé, Arts and Crafts cutlery, and other rare, collectible items.
   
   Was it all glitter? Heller, who built a reputation for honesty and know-how, tells what it's like to run a business, spot (or miss) a repro piece masquerading as the real thing, and guard against thieves clever enough to snatch a $60,000 ring from a display case while the store is open!
   
   Shining through are the personal tales about the characters that Izzy came to trust and admire in his dealings - artisans to bankers to diamond merchants in New York City to celebrities such as Lena Horne. Then there are the encounters with folks such as "Harry the Plunderer," the "Boys from Beirut," and "Dan the Ladies Man."
   
   Secrets of a Jeweler is a behind- the-scenes glimpse of a glamorous industry that is equally insightful about human nature. Written with heart and soul, it's both a fascinating and funny story - loss, pathos, recovery - beauty and chicanery. It's all here and it's the real thing.
   
   Don't let this sparkly, endearing book remain a secret to you and your circle. Highly recommended!

No comments about The Judds: A Biography.