3 comments about Tryin' To Get To You: The Story of Elvis Presley.

1. Renaissance came at the end of 1968. Elvis did a Comeback Special for television. He sat in the round with friends and performed the early hits. At the show's end, he appeared in a white suit and sang If I Can Dream. It was his first relevant song in awhile. It fit the rough period of the late 1960s with its Vietnam War, Civil Rights and Counter Culture. Elvis came off as a preacher with a message in this third and final incarnation. Suspicious Minds was his first number in 7 years. He played the International Hotel in Las Vegas, gave up movies and went back to the road. He donned jump suits and bell bottoms. Legendary guitarist James Burton joined his band. Burning Love went to number 2. Then, things began to slide. Divorce was a factor. Elvis was fooling around, and Priscilla left with her karate instructor. Aloha from Hawaii in 1973 was the last big hurrah. Elvis had a special relationship with Hawaii, and his passion was evident. American Trilogy reeks with pathos.



2. I read this book when I was in 7th grade, which was.... oh, let's see... I'm 30 now... so that means I read this book approximately seven billion years ago. Or so it seems. Anyway, I also wrote a report on this book for English class. The book was okay, but to this day I remember one glaring error: the author named Elvis' first post-army film "G.I. Joe." Of course, that title should be "G.I. Blues." Hopefully that error has been corrected in this new edition.



3. In the fall of 1954 I was 14 and living in the very small town Stamford, Texas, where Elvis came to sing, accompanied by Scotty and Bill. Elvis had just recorded "That's All Right, Mama" and Sun Records would produce four more in quick succession, as Elvis toured around in his pink Cadillac. The night he appeared in our high school auditorium (tickets $.25), he wore ivory shirt, slacks and shoes. I had never been to a "concert" before but I was totally crazy about him from the start. A couple of my friends and I rushed backstage and got his autograph. We stayed up late that night gushing about his music, smile, and unusual Adonis-like appearance. In the early morning we heard where the guys were eating breakfast, and we rushed over. He invited us to join them.

   As Elvis toured Texas that year, we went too and always were invited backstage. I got to know what Elvis was like then and was even kissed by him. In between stops we had energy to burn and the local disc jockey (wisely) suggested we start a fan club. Elvis gave us photos, signed cards, and read letters that came to me.

   This book was first published after Elvis' death and is now restored to print by a special program of the Authors Guild. That's me in the cover photo standing to Elvis' right.

No comments about My Playmates Were Eskimos.

2 comments about From a High Place: A Life of Arshile Gorky.

1. Matthew Spender has something to offer for someone really curious about this artists work. I have been compairing the three biographies. Herrara's book has been much acclained. But, when it comes to getting into the nitty -gritty of an artist's work, Spender is better. Particularly when he writes of his work in the fields of Virginia.None of the other writers have really tackled this important part of Gorky's art. As a sculpture Spender must have wondered would Gorky like me and my work.The Armenian backgound has been covered by quite a few books. None can surpass some of Spenders insight into Gorky's creative process.A shortcomihg of this biography is the lack of color reproductions of the paintings.His choice of photos of the family of Gorky ,give us a glimpse of his background. The paper back (a catalogue ) "the breakthrough years /Arshile Gorky" would be a good companion book of this bio as it has ample repros and an essay by Spender among others ;Aupling for one.



2. Matthew Spender, son of poet Stephen, is a good writer who does a deft job of weaving his research into a lively story. But being the husband of Gorky's oldest daughter limits his interests to the "family" side of the artist's life: to hear Spender tell it, Gorky lived through three decades of New York's modern art revolution dreaming of butterchurns back in Armenia. He never really explains what drove Gorky to become an artist, let alone an abstract modern artist, in the face of family pressures, the trials of being an immigrant, and the burden he carried as a survivor of the Armenian genocide.
   
   Gorky's idyllic memories of childhood clearly played a major role in his life and art, but so did Picasso and Cezanne, whose style he copied until the breakthrough near the end of his life. Spender plays down the endless hours Gorky spent in front of the canvas trying to insert himself into the history of Western art, preferring to read the artist's somewhat restricted interests (he steered clear of the tumultuous politics of Thirties New York, avoided bohemia, and refused to theorize about the inner sources of his art) as a gauge of how deeply Armenia held him. Maybe. But more attention to the exciting world his work unfolded in would have helped to explain Gorky's achievement a little more clearly. Hayden Herrera's more recent "Arshile Gorky: His Life and Work" may have replaced this biography and is probably the better place to turn for learning more about his life.

No comments about Pearls of Childhood: The Poignant True Wartime Story of a Young Girl Growing Up in an Adopted Land.

5 comments about Bad Blood: A Memoir.

1. I read through this book in a long afternoon, finding it totally engrossing. The story is about a young girl growing up under the roof of her grandfather, an intellectual vicar who led a double life of sex and booze, and her grandmother, an angry, disappointed anti-intellectual diabetic who lived for the treats of going to movies, candy, and scented soaps. The two detested each other, and their daughter wore herself out and sacrificed her personality to keep the household going in a very marginal way. The daughter had a daughter of her own, the author of this memoir, Lorna Sage. I don't think the point of this story is that her life was a nightmare, though it was hardly happy. It was about how, as humans, we all just keep making messes of our lives, generation after generation, and we all have our own family history and genetics which determine our strengths and our devastating flaws. Lorna inherited her grandfather's "bad blood", along with his use of books to escape both the place he was in (an isolated, wet, postwar depressed backwater), and the mess he was actively making of his life. In the middle of this mess, Lorna used this gift to survive, and even to struggle out of the quagmire by getting an advanced education.



2. This finely written memoir of her childhood as an Anglican minister's granddaughter. Today, or recently, [she died in 2001] Sage is an English literary critic and her memoir is both appreciably granular and endowed with a coherent overview. Highly recommended. Won the Whitbread Biography Award.



3. I grew up in the same 1950's in England and apart from her randy grandad shared many of the same experiences, feelings and general discomfort with the miserable, narrow social conditions in England. Put another way a perfect breeding ground for the english character of inhibitions, repression of feelings, violence and fear of economic success riddled with Edwardian class distinctions of no value/relevance in the 50's. Jealousy of the American post war success and hide bound by genteel poverty everywhere it was not surprising that England's social scene exploded in the 60's and 70's. I left England for the US many years ago to escape the trapped kingdom of the mind and the pathetic lack of real freedoms, nostalgia is the UK's greatest industry and the more books like this that appear will help people understand that england's "ennui" is not that attractive after all !



4. Holy moly! You wanna talk about a dysfunctional family? Here it is. It's during the years of WWII. The author's father is off fighting for God and country, and her mother is having a delayed adolescence, so author Lorna Sage is shipped to her grandparents house somewhere in rural England. Her grandparents are weird, weird, weird, but it is their very faults that ultimately make Sage, a well-known and powerful literary critic, into the person she becomes.
   Her grandfather is a debauched, intellectual, furious and infuriating vicar whose idiosyncrasies were seemingly limitless. Her grandmother's rage at her lot in life and the man who was responsible for it (and by extension, ALL men) never once abates - and you almost champion her for her constancy.
   Bad Blood reads as wicked fun with a strongly feminist underlying message. I loved it.



5. The story of an unexceptional childhood - mild neglect, some poverty and a very filthy home - neither sordid nor tragic nor eventful enough to be compelling reading. Especially for a person raised in India the dysfunctionality level of childhood/family seems average. The only redeeming feature is Lorna Sage's writing style. Witty and insightful. Normally this should raise a book to atleast 3 and a half stars but somehow this one does not quite make it past "interesting enough to read when there's nothing better to do". To use review cliches since they work so well in describing a book, it is readable but far short of unputdownable.

5 comments about Hotel Kid: A Times Square Childhood.

1. I've stayed in the michealangelo several times and this is such a great description of the hotel and nyc.



2. If you've ever enjoyed old movies set in the glamourous world of New York in the 1940's, you'll love this book. The author's father was general manager of the legendary Taft Hotel in New York in the Big Band era of the 1930's & 1940's. The family lived in a suite in the hotel, were waited on by hotel staff & dined in its restaurants. The cover photo (of my hard-cover edition) shows them all dressed up in the hotel dining room - even the children are in suits - & his mother wearing a frilly collar & one of those Big Hats tilted rakishly over one eye.
   
   By the age of 12 Stephen had an encyclopaedic knowledge of food and wines but no idea of what normal home life or play was like for the rest of us.
   
   One example of the gaps of ignorance that would plague him through life occurs at age 40 when he marries and buys a house. The basement is full of extra windows, which his wife explains are "storm windows". "Are you crazy," he says, "there's no way I can get all this up in time before a storm". Ironically, with the ubiquitous thermal windows of today, the concept of "storm windows" will soon pass away from the ken of another generation. As he recalls some of the worldly advice given to him by his father, "take the swizzle stick out of your drink so that you don't poke yourself in the eye with it" was of little relevance to his own children -a problem that occurs, I suspect, with a great deal of inter-generational communication.
   
   "Hotel Kid" is an engaging account of a fascinating era that is gone forever.



3. I must say, "Hotel Kid" by Stephen Lewis, is the best book I have ever read, and his writing style is exquisite. I absolutely loved it and it has touched me deeply, in fact, moved me to tears. I miss the old Hotel Taft very much, as well as New York as it once was. So much has changed over the years and the things I held dear are now gone. Stephen Lewis makes old New York come vividly alive again.
   I first stayed at the Hotel Taft 33 years ago when I was 12 years old and it has held a special place in my heart ever since. I've stayed there many times since then, including a three week stay starting the day after I graduated from high school in 1978, after which I moved to New York. I loved the Taft back then, but I had no idea till now, after reading "Hotel Kid", how much more the Taft had to offer in it's hey day. I wish I could have experienced that time frame also, as it sounds even more spectacular than the era I was in. Thanks to Stephen Lewis, I can vividly picture and feel a sense of what it was like to be there.
   It breaks my heart to see the Taft butchered up into condos and the diminutive Michelangelo. Less than a year ago I was walking with a friend through Times Square and we stopped to rest. I was telling him about the Taft and I looked up at the street sign to see where we were in relation to where the Taft was and realized I had been leaning up against it the whole time. I hadn't even recognized it.
   Thank you Stephen Lewis for sharing so much and giving such an enlightening and fitting tribute to the much loved Taft.



4. Stephen Lewis, a teacher of memoir-writing, was raised during the 30s in a NY hotel where his father worked as general manager. In this gently amusing memoir, he recreates the experience for us, his readers, ushering us into a world in which everything was provided to the family by the hotel and its purveyors. Bathroom supplies were mysteriously restocked; meals arrived by room service; beds were made and floors swept; clothing was ordered by phone and appeared in drawers and closets.
   Hotel Kid is a gentle and affectionate portrayal of New York's Time Square area as it once was, and of a very unusual childhood lived amid the then-splendor of the theater district. Very nice; an easy read.



5. Hotel Kid is the story of the Lewis Family and the hotel Mr. Lewis managed back in the golden days of Times Square.

   Living in a two room apartment might not have been that uncommon for many New York children but few of them also ate only room service or signed for snacks in the resturaunt in the lobby. It is an interesting tale about life in a gilded age now gone.

   More than just the logistics of Steven Lewis' life were uniqe. He was more than just a kid hanging around the hotel. He was the Crown Prince of place as well. The most telling parts of the book reveal how he came to understand the borrowed athority he possesed or how even a child he could make the adults nervous. When a strike at the hotel pits managment and staff against each other you see the conflicting loyalites of the author. Scion of the boss he was still a friend to many on the picket line.

   This book was an enjoyable read about a time so far away and yet not really that long ago. It was a quick read and well worth the time it took.

No comments about Sally and Me.

5 comments about Hard Candy.

1. Hard Candy is an incredible novel that invades your thoughts and emotions as you read it, and long after you complete it. Mr. Carroll refuses to "sugar coat" any of his disturbing and heart-wrenching experiences in an attempt to enlighten the reader of the horrors that still exist in state mental institutions and foster systems alike. Simply reading this book will immediately encourage the reader to join the author in his quest to enlighten those who are uninformed of these tragedies. I personally was able to complete this novel from cover to cover in less than 48 hours as each page takes the reader deeper into Mr. Carroll's amazing story. If one should decide to purchase this book, they will find themselves honored that the author was willing to share his experiences to bring these problems to light. Truly a "must read!"



2. Carroll's book is hard to put down once you start reading it. I was shocked at how easily institutional workers could abuse and neglect patients without adequate care and supervision. This book is truly a must read for all teachers or anyone involved with youth care. Hard Candy helps one to actualize that physical and sexual abuses inflicted upon children is something which has happened and still is happening in staggering numbers in our country; however, it does not seem to be a topic which one is comfortable to talk about. Carroll makes light of the history of institutional abuse and neglect towards children by discussing the traumas which he and his brother experienced. Carroll's message is to encourage readers to help prevent these harms from occurring again. Hard Candy is well documented and Carroll has done excellent research in tracing how institutions for youths have taken advantage of and abused their patients, in particular youth, because they receive no support nor are taken seriously in their accusations. Carroll makes the reader wonder how thousands of children have been abused (like he was) and were unable to ever speak out or represent themselves or other victims. Carroll has great courage for speaking about the childhood traumas of himself and his brother Bobby. No child should ever have to go through the abuses and fear which these boys suffered. The readers and youth developers of today should really take light of Carroll's book. Hard Candy substantiates that physical, sexual, and mental abuses have take place on a wide-scale towards the youth of yesterday and TODAY. Carroll's book is provoking in that the conscientious reader cannot help but call into question the state and national standards for supervising institutions for youths. Certainly changes and closer supervision of any and all institutions need to be maintained more thoroughly. I think Carroll's book says that the time is to make changes is NOW. If more standards, investigations and outlets for youth to talk confidentially are not established then these horrors will keep occurring at drastically high levels. It is shameful that in a country as great as ours that these abuses and neglects have been able to take place at the levels they have. Carroll provides an understanding of these abuses and perpetrators of these abuses have been able to get away with their assaults. Therefore, as people concerned with our nation's youth, we need to realize that immediate changes in institutional and youth care are safe-guarded immediately. Furthermore,we need to reflect upon Carroll's book to helps us realize these facts do indeed exist and that we are challenged as adults and caring people to protect our youth today. Hard Candy is certainly a cornerstone for arguing that youth care and institutional care certainly need reform and need to be maintained with higher levels of professionalism, protection, and human decency which they properly deserve. Hard Candy will surely be reflected upon in the near future as a stirring for insitituional reform movements to take place.



3. When I first opened the book Hard Candy, little did I realize it would first be one of the better books I have read in a long time, yet with out a doubt the saddest I have ever read. But in this sadness is revealed the cruel, harsh tactics used by institutional staff to "control" the "patients." Mr. Carroll has dedicated his life to sharing his story of pain, anguish, dispair, and brutality. His first offering "Hard Candy: Nobody Ever Flies Over the Cuckoos Nest" goes into extreme depth of his life as a youth- being tossed around like a ragdoll from one foster family to another and from one institution to another. The stories of abuse from both staff and other "patients" is at times unbearable, yet one cannot seem to put the book down. From the dark cellar of Birch Cottage to a day trip to New York, you are right along side Mr. Carroll through the scraps of his childhood. This is a book that should be on everybodys bookshelf, and close attention should be payed to the harsh techniques that are still being used in institutions today. This book has been extremly influential upon me, helping me decide to become a social worker hopefully to one day work in such an institution. This book must be read. Period.



4. Sometimes the truth isn't so pretty. It was hard for me to read about such horrible blunt truths of the injustices... that occurred for young Charles and his brother Bobby. It was just plain shocking and very sad. Maybe that's what we need to hear and see... to make changes occur within our medical systems and laws. We need people like Charles to speakout for themselves and others.
   It's a wonderful book by this author & advocate of our civil rights.
   GREAT JOB!!!



5. hard, not at all sweet and an altogether riveting read. Vivid, difficult to take at times but ultimately an inspirational tale of the resiliency of the human spirit against all odds, and a painful yet important reminder of how we are all complicit in abuse when we do not choose to take action

5 comments about The Stones Applaud: How Cystic Fibrosis Shaped My Childhood.

1. I really enjoyed this book, and read it in 2 sittings. The author was a courageous young woman and I'm amazed what she accomplished in such a short life. It is written in a pleasant conversational way that I felt like I knew her a bit when I finished.
   
   The one thing I wish it had was a more in depth study of the authors family (Theresa also had a sister who had CF, and died a few years after she did). Her family went on to have a few more children (were her parents aware of the risk?) after her and her sister were diagnosed. I was also curious to how it affected them emotionally, I wish maybe her parents could have touched on this a bit more, just because it was so interesting I would have loved to know more, particularly how her sister struggled as well.
   
   I also recommend Breathing for a Living by Laura Rothenburg, my favorite book.



2. I think Teresa Mullin achieved her goals in writing this book. It's a truly eye-opening account of what it's like to grow up with a severe chronic illness---how much she had to fight to be able to even be given a chance to do things we all take for granted. I was especially horrified by the account of the sadistic sounding head nurse at her prep school, who seemed to enjoy making her feel out of place. It was sad but telling to read about her delight in very ordinary things like pulling an all-nighter with friends studying and then going very early to Dunkin Donuts---something most of us would not count among life's big events.
   
   I also realized how the emphasis on finding the genes for genetic diseases might distract those who would otherwise work to make everyday life for people with the diseases better. Mullin felt it might have been not that hard to find a way to better fight lung infections and loosen secretions, but so much of the time and money went into finding a cure, and not into finding new treatments. That must be a huge dilemma.
   
   I don't know anyone personally with CF, but I do know quite a few children at my sons' inclusive school that are living with severe chronic conditions, and this book will affect how I see them. I wish the best for Mullin's family. I think her parents should also write a book. They would have much to tell about their life with two children with CF---their younger daughter Susan's story is overshadowed here, naturally, as Teresa was away from home so much, but I would love to know more about her, and about how the parents decided to have more children, and about their work on the behalf of CF. I want to thank them for having this book published.



3. Teresa's book about her life is excellent. She's a strong-willed, brilliant person who conveys her experiences without a hint of self-pity. She's articulate and honest, and she opened my eyes to the shortcomings of preventative medicine and its neglect of those who are already living with disease. She also reminded me that you can't take a break from fighting injustice. Every day she fought it, through exhaustion and other people's ignorance. Teresa seems to have had a tireless spirit, and I hope this book helps people remember to continue Teresa's fight against medical complacency and the marginalization of chronically ill people.



4. The book is full of brio, and evinces an emotional maturity that may come only from an early intimacy with one's own mortality. Teresa comes alive again on the pages, with a rare, first-hand account of life with cystic fibrosis that will earn her immortality among her readers.



5. Teresa's words are filled with insight, purpose, and pure honesty. The Stones Applaud offers the healthy an eye-opening account of life as we've constructed it, and offers the chronically-ill a champion for their cause. Highly recommended.

2 comments about My Sky Blue Trades: Growing Up Counter in a Contrary Time.

1. A few themes run through these memoir-essays: rebellion against the father, books as an escape from life. Ok just two themes. The fifties and sixties (Birkerts was born in 1951) are what might be the most documented decades in the history of man. Its very difficult to write a memoir about this time that doesn't sound cliched.

   Birkerts parents were from Latvia and spoke Latvian in the Michigan family home. Ok thats new. But Sven who insisted on being called Peter was a rebel with a cause as a young man: he wanted to conform and be American. As he got older he traded in the desire to conform for a desire to be different and so he became a hippie and he did all the things hippies do: drug experiences, sex, travel, Woodstock. Though well written this kind of book is routine. Birkerts is strongest when he is talking about his grandparents but he is at his weakest when he is talking about the counterculture and his various girlfriends. Birkerts' first love is not women but books. When he is discussing a book all the lights come on in his head but when he is talking about a woman the room remains dim.

   Memoirs are reckonings and the person the writer is really attempting to reckon with is themselves. I get the feeling however that Birkerts has not quite gotten there yet. In this self-portrait the artist hides behind a series of 1950's and 1960's cliches; the experiences Birkert's describes just seem too generic. It is as if his mind is clouded with the popular view of 1950's-60's and he cannot see beyond that to form his own view of the times. Also there just isn't enough of his inner life in this book; no sense of intellectual evolution, no great awakenings to the world except in the most cliched kind of way, and no sense of love for his craft. In fact he doesn't really talk about his craft much. I was expecting some irony or some literary comment on the sameness of childhood and teen years. But no irony, no originality, just a generic MEMOIR.

   A few observations are precisely worded though the thoughts themselves do not sound particularly authentic. Birkerts is a careful reader and his essays are often thoroughly researched and he is excellent at giving an overview of an author's career but I don't thnk he has a particularly unique vision of life to offer. To offer something unique he needs to dig deeper into his experience than he chose to do here.




2. Having grown up in much the same time period and with much the same ethnic background (my family, too, came to the United States from Latvia during WW2), even in the same approximate area (lower Michigan), I picked up Birkerts' book (and, as chance would have it, I found it in the bookstore in Ann Arbor he describes as his place of employment) with immense curiosity. Just how similar would his experience be to mine? Initially, it was rather exhilirating to read this memoir that spoke of so much that I, too, knew so well, down to the ethnic bone. As I read of his discomforts and anxieties about learning a new language other than the one spoken in his home, his sense of being something of a misfit in both the Latvian and the American communities, I identified in most every detail. Ah, yes, this too I felt on my adolescent thin hide... Mine, I felt simultaneously as blessing and curse, as perhaps, in conclusion, did Birkerts.

   In later years, of course, Birkerts' experiences forked away very much from my own... but no matter. I didn't need to look into a mirror to sustain my interest. Indeed, that is the whole appeal of this book - it is not only for the multicultural reader. The writing is excellent, and my exhiliration at sharing in a similar experience soon veered to an exhiliration simply in reading a book so well written. Perhaps that is one of the blessings of being bilingual, this ability to approach a second language with greater awareness. Birkerts' use of language is vibrant and lush and frequently stunning. His insights and perspective on his work, his relationships, the inner workings of his developing self.... all are richly portrayed. No matter from what backgrounds we come, we all question ourselves and our life choices, we all struggle with similar demons at one time or another. Family dynamics are not so different, I'm sure, no matter what the ethnic background.

   Birkerts' `My Sky Blue Trades' is a valuable portrayal of the immigrant experience for more than one generation, but is also of value simply as a well written book.