1 comments about The Illustrated London News, 1917-1919 (Collected Works of Gk Chesterton).

1. This volume of "The Collected Works" contains GK's weekly essays for "The Illustrated London News" from 1917 through 1919. He writes mainly about the Great War, Germany, the problems of the peace, various forms of socialism, and Bolshevism. For GK, the Great War was nothing less than a battle between Christendom and barbarianism. He pounds Prussia and Prussianism into the ground with relentlessly logical arguments, and a recounting of facts so obvious and fundamental that they seem to have been overlooked by the pacifists, socialists and other war critics of the time. His perspective on American culture, Wilson, The League of Nations, the Russian Revolution, Poland, France, capitalism, on and on, are truly fascinating and blend together to provide an incredibly vivid picture of the political and social forces at work in Europe in this enormously complicated and tumultuous period. This book should be required reading for any college course on World War I.

1 comments about The Right Place at the Right Time: 2.

1. "The Right Place At The Right Time" is an excellent professional memoir that has the merit of being both entertaining and informative. From his early days of working as a sub-editor for the Reuters international news service in London, to the pioneering way he later helped to break the mold of network television's pack journalism, Robert MacNeil tells wonderful stories from one of the most interesting periods of the 20th century.

   MacNeil was there when the Belgian Congo was granted its independence and--like many developing African nations unprepared for the end of colonial rule--fell into tribal feuds and warfare. He reported from the front lines of the Cold War in Berlin as the Wall was being built, and was in Cuba during the missile crisis. He was there at the assassination of President Kennedy and (in all probability) even met Lee Harvey Oswald just minutes after the shooting. MacNeil covered the 1964 presidential campaigns of Barry Goldwater and Lyndon Johnson, fought the Nixon Administration to prevent the federal government from interfering with freedom of the press on public television, and ultimately gave up a comfortable job with the BBC to launch what would later become the "MacNeil/Lehrer Report."

   During the most turbulent years of the 1960s, it is clear that MacNeil was haunted by the escalating body count of the Vietnam War, and his disillusion with the conflict in Southeast Asia runs throughout this book like a subtext that puts many of the breaking news events into a sort of special perspective. For a man who has interviewed everyone from Charlie Chaplin to the Ayatollah Khomeini (before the fundamentalist revolution in Iran), it is remarkable how his focus keeps returning to the Vietnam War and what it did to America at home and overseas.

   Accordingly, "The Right Place At The Right Time" is full of colorful, often funny, sometimes heartbreaking, stories about the people touched by events beyond their control. MacNeil has a keen eye for how the broadcasting business can illuminate or distort the facts of a particular case, and he goes to considerable effort not to let his work slip into the cliche of stale formula punditry. For the most part, he succeeds. His criticism of modern television news as being obsessed with style over substance is especially devastating. He demonstrates a respect for the intelligence of his viewers that seems rare among the media today.

   If MacNeil's book has a fault, it is that the author never ventures into the realm of a true autobiography. The man himself is something of a cipher. While it is admirable that he has not indulged in the type of confessional, introspective New Journalism that is so fashionable and trendy among writers now, MacNeil is so reserved about protecting his privacy that he says more about one of his old grade-school teachers than he does about his family. Even Walter Cronkite's recent autobiography told the reader more about his wife and children than MacNeil does at any point in this account. After a while, it tends to deprive him of a human dimension. You learn something of his political leanings (liberal), for example, but he never includes more than a passing reference to any part of his domestic life, and that makes him come across as rather bloodless and remote.

   Nevertheless, that small quibble aside, "The Right Place At The Right Time" is one of those few books that really does have something important to say, and does so with grace and wit to spare. The short chapters fly by quickly. And when you reach the end, you may even realize that MacNeil has not only provided food for thought, but also left you looking at the broadcasting industry in ways that you haven't before.

5 comments about Lost Black Sheep: The Search for WWII Ace Chris Magee.

1. Chris Magee, the enigmatic "Wildman" of Pappy Boyington's Marine "Blacksheep" fighter squadron of World War II, disappeared in the late 1950's after serving as a fighter pilot in Israel's fledgling Air Force and also after serving several years in an American penitentiary for robbing two banks in one day. Then journalist Robert T. Reed discovered that the "Wildman" was his biological father. And through an astute process of "investigative reporting," Mr. Reed has pieced together a thoroughly fascinating portrait of a gifted pilot, talented and sensitive human being and quintessential "free spirit." Mr. Reed's book constitutes a fine addition to the annals of those whom Tom Brokaw has designated America's "Greatest Generation." It's indisputable that the efforts of extraordinary men like Chris Magee were crucial in bringing victory to the Allied Powers in history's greatest conflict.



2. If you are a fan of WW II VMF-214, "Baa Baa Black Sheep" and "Once They Were Eagles", this is a must read. Two stories in one. That of "Bandanna Maggie" before, during and after WW II. Also, a determined author's quest about a Marine hero he did not know until too long. Follow the trail of a Marine I'm sure Gregory Boyington admired as a great fellow warrior after the "big one" and his attepts to find himself in war and peace. (Success, or failure? Yes? No? You decide.) A remarkable book for those who are interested in the men of 214. As I said, if you liked the two first books mentioned, you will love this one written by the one man who would have done it.



3. If, like me, you read Baa Baa Blacksheep and Once They Were Eagles, this is for you. The mysterious life and whereabouts of Chris Magee almost haunted me after reading Frank Walton's Once They Were Eagles. The information about Chris Magee in Walton's book and the fascinating letter it contains left many questions about Magee that begged for answers. I knew this would be an interesting book before I read it and I was not let down. I did not know it would be emotionally provocative. I won't spoil the surprises. Don't read too many reviews lest you not get the full effect. Pick it up soon.



4. In Lost Black Sheep: The Search For WWII Ace Chris Magee, Robert Reed reveals saga of an extraordinary man in a real-life story of war and peace, crime and punishment. Chris Magee was one of the legendary Black Sheep Squadron under "Pappy" Boyington's command. He grew up with stories of World War I aviation heroes and joined the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1941. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Chris transferred to the U.S. Marine Corps and went to the South Pacific where his personal bravery and skills as a combat flier earned him the Navy Cross and the respect of his peers. After the war ended Chris spent the next twelve years as a black marketeer, bootlegger, volunteer fighter pilot for Israel, courier for a covert American group involved in Latin American politics, and finally a bank robber. In his middle years he turned his life around and became a respected journalist. By age 70 he was living in retirement in a rustic apartment on Chicago's North Side. Then Chris found an envelope slipped under his front door with a note that compelled him to revisit parts of his past he thought long buried. Several of Magee's letters, poetry, and other writings are woven into the text (including a short story titled "Keep Moving". Lost Black Sheep is a fascinating, superbly written biography of a very unusual American unusal life.



5. I received my copy of Bob's book two weeks after I had scheduled a trip to Waterbury Connecticut to the 56th reunion of my own father's WWII military group. My father passed away last year after a long battle with alzheimers, and I too was on a quest of sorts. I was never able to get my father to open up about his war experiences on the beaches of Normandy and beyond, and know now that their generation was truly the "great generation" of our time. This book really hit home. The content was interesting enough that I read the book at one sitting, and it provoked questions of a very personal nature to me. For those of us who are members of the "baby boom" generation I hope we all start asking our Fathers, Mothers, Uncles, Aunts - anyone with personal experiences about this remarkable time in our history to share their stories with us while they are able. We should also give them a sincere Thank You for their sacrifices.

1 comments about Eleanor Roosevelt's My Day: First Lady of the World : Her Acclaimed Columns 1953-1962.

1. In his overview of Mrs. Roosevelt's "My Day" newspaper columns, Elmblidge succeeds by converting each year of columns into its own chronologized, self-contained chapter -- and within the framework of that chronology -- allowing the excerpts chosen to represent the most telling events of the "day," translation: fifties decade.

   Elmblidge enables us to glide through this volume with his rich chapter introductions and an exposition preceding each excerpt. The result is not only a thorough understanding of the former First Lady's opinions on a wide array of social issues, but an absolute appreciation of an era in which she was so active and outspoken.

   This book should be back in print! It is exceptionally well structured and straightforward; the personal stamp of the seasoned Mrs. Roosevelt is everywhere. Elmblidge's Volume III is an especially smart choice for those who did not experience the America (and world beyond) of the 1950's firsthand, but would wish to.

5 comments about Orwell: The Life.

1. To be quite frank, I did not enjoy this book.
   
   Not only did I not like the way it's written, but I didn't like what I was reading either.
   
   Firstly, his research is impeccable, but it was so hard to know who anybody was in this book, he just pops up random characters left and right, and he'll just casually mention cousins and neighbours and you are expected to remember them all.
   
   I think it's because he spent so long researching the stuff that he just has everybody memorized, but for a reader remembering casual friends and stuff like that by last name when they haven't been mentioned for 150 pages is hard.
   
   He also mentions Orwell's father's death as an afterthought.
   He has chapters about the most mundane stuff, and he mentions Orwell's father being sick many times.
   But then he changes the subject and you are wondering whatever happened to his father.
   Then you read another 20 pages and he mentions it while talking about something else.
   
   Furthermore, after reading nearly 500 pages on this man's life, you begin to view the book as written for the purpose of revealing his dark nature.
   Orwell's eccentricity and lack of social tact are basically what the book is about.
   
   The back of the book jacket reads, "Taylor's magisterial assessment cuts through Orwell's iconic status to reveal a bitter critic who concealed a profound totalitarian streak and whose progress through the literary world of the 30s and 40s was characterized by the myths he built around himself."
   
   Taylor writes the book to convince us that Orwell was a creepy poor man with an unhappy marriage, a womanizer and pitifully helpless father.
   Then you remember the magisterial books that the man produced, and you realize that nothing in this portrayal of the man gives any indication of greatness or of the material he ended up producing.
   The sole convincing argument was that 1984 was so gloomy because of the tortuous state the author himself was in when he wrote it.
   I would give it 2 stars if I felt that the research was poor, but the author does display his knowledge of Orwell's works several times.
   Towards the end he even mentions a few specific scenes and passages from the 1984 that appeared in Orwell's earlier writing. He has clearly pored over the hordes of work Orwell produced.
   
   Pros:
   
   Very well researched.
   The photographs included are a great help in visualizing the people in his life.
   
   Cons:
   
   Disjointed, disorganized, haphazard writing. More than once he is making an argument, only to digress and be sidetracked for several pages. Then he continues his argument out of the blue and you are reminded, "Ah, that's what he was talking about."
   
   Seems to write for the purpose of debunking Orwell's mythological status, which would be fine, but it makes for a very poor first read into the man's life.
   
   So, if you are not an Orwell fan, and would like to read a dissertation on the man's darker side, then this book is for you.
   However, if you are looking for your first biography on the man who produced utter genius like 1984 and Animal Farm, then I would suggest you start with something else.
   
   B-



2. Well, I guess idols routinely crumble under scrutiny, so I shouldn't really be surprised that I came away from D.J. Taylor's biography of George Orwell viewing the famous author more as a man than as a hero. That is how it must be, however. When we study our fellow humans their flaws become discernible regardless of their greatness. As a man, Eric Blair was far from grand. He appeared to have the same faults present in many writers (all-be-they to a lesser extent). I now have a better appreciation of the author, and for the suffering he went through along with the challenges of his life. My one complaint is that Taylor did not treat his subject with the respect to which he was entitled. More empathy and less Thackeray would have been immensely appreciated. As for me, I'll always treasure 1984, Down and Out in Paris and London, Homage to Catalonia, and Keep the Aspidistra Flying. Hitchens was right; Orwell remains relevant. This biography heightens our awareness of the man even though it comes at the cost of his no longer seeming transcendent. Orwell's creative genius is not something undermined by these pages, but I do think that it's hard to appreciate his political outlook after closely examining it. His animosity towards Marxism is rather comical when one considers his continuing, quasi-religious belief in socialism. His time at the BBC taught him a little bit about the way in which bureaucracies function and we can only hopefully speculate that, if he had lived longer, he would have eventually renounced his love for statism and seen the light.



3. Well, I guess idols routinely crumble under scrutiny, so I shouldn't really be surprised that I came away from D.J. Taylor's biography of George Orwell viewing the famous author more as a man than as a hero. That is how it must be, however. When we study our fellow humans their flaws become discernible regardless of their greatness. As a man, Eric Blair was far from grand. He appeared to have the same faults present in many writers (all-be-they to a lesser extent). I now have a better appreciation of the author, and for the suffering he went through along with the challenges of his life. My one complaint is that Taylor did not treat his subject with the respect to which he was entitled. More empathy and less Thackeray would have been immensely appreciated. As for me, I'll always treasure 1984, Down and Out in Paris and London, Homage to Catalonia, and Keep the Aspidistra Flying. Hitchens was right; Orwell remains relevant. This biography heightens our awareness of the man even though it comes at the cost of his no longer seeming transcendent. Orwell's creative genius is not something undermined by these pages, but I do think that it's hard to appreciate his political outlook after closely examining it. His animosity towards Marxism is rather comical when one considers his continuing, quasi-religious belief in socialism. His time at the BBC taught him a little bit about the way in which bureaucracies function and we can only hopefully speculate that, if he had lived longer, he would have eventually renounced his love for statism and seen the light.



4. This is a difficult book to categorize. It is well written, contains many interesting anecdotes, but it misses the essential Orwell.
   
   Taylor's gloomy, otherwordly, ex-Etonian, ex-imperial policeman simply does not add up to Orwell. The sum of the parts is much less than the man. Taylor's book is a bit like an autopsy, the pathologist clearly never being able to comprehend the stiff, dead flesh and bottled samples before him as the full human being they were. Nevertheless, autopsies do tell interesting tales.
   
   Orwell's gloomy temperament puts him not outside the mainstream of writers but exactly in the company of so many important writers. The list of writers with some form of depression, whether alcoholism or gloominess, is so huge - Greene, Swift, Hemingway, Le Carré, Dickens, Gissing, O'Neill, Twain, Faulkner, etc, etc. - one comes to think of the quality almost as a job requirement. It provides one of the special lens through which critical writers see the world. One has to believe Taylor understands this, but his book conveys only clinical observations of gloominess snipped from letters, diaries, and conversations.
   
   As far as Orwell's otherworldliness, Orwell was clearly in the great tradition of English eccentrics, and that is an important component of his appeal. There is a long and glorious line of them from Dr. Johnson and Jane Austen down to Alec Guinness, Margaret Rutherford, and Vanessa Redgrave. Yet Taylor only offers clinical observations and never puts them in their proper context.
   
   Orwell was not an important novelist, so it seems a bit gratuitous to say so as Taylor does. In fact, he wasn't even a very good novelist. Yet books like Keep the Aspadistra Flying do provide a keen sense of his Englishness. Missing entirely from Taylor's autopsy is a sense of Orwell's quintessential Englishness. When Orwell writes of getting back to the feel of heavy English coins and having mahogany tea, readers get a sense of pure distilled Englishness. This comes through also in quasi-journalistic books like The Road to Wigan Pier or Down and Out in Paris and London - important early efforts at what today might be called investigative journalism - books which Taylor rather disparages both in terms of Orwell's re-arranging actual events and being an observer mentally wearing an Eton tie.
   
   What Orwell was is a critic, and a rather magnificent one. I am reminded of Degas' description of Monet as "Only an eye, but what an eye!"
   
   Orwell had an exquisite sense of justice and a very sensitive barometer for tyranny plus he had the words to convey vividly his sensibilities. Taylor virtually misses this in his examination of bile and stool samples. Taylor too often puts Orwell's political criticism down to miss-directed, soft-Left thinking of an ex-Etonian. Orwell himself recognized the simpering nature of much of the Left's views, yet he struggled bravely with finding a vocabulary to accommodate his sympathies. He possibly did not come to recognize himself for what he was, a scorching critic of both Left and Right. After all, his time was short. That is how it is when you die in your forties.
   
   He was also an important literary critic, and while Taylor recognizes this, I don't believe he gives it a full enough examination.
   
   Taylor sadly drags out the subject of anti-Semitism, perhaps the most overly-used epithet of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. If Orwell was anti-Semitic - and I do not believe this for a second - it was in the same vague sense of virtually all Englishmen of his time. The English have always had a degree of xenophobia, a quality whose obverse side is the very set of qualities defining Englishness. I am tired of discussions of whether Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice makes the greatest playwright in human history anti-Semitic, discussions which always ignore the human qualities and sense of justice Shakespeare gives his character, and just so, Orwell, overall a truly decent man.
   
   There has been a good deal of writing in recent years about Orwell, much of it wrong-headed, from claims being made that he would have supported Bush's invasion of Iraq (!) to sentimentality. Little of it captures Orwell the independent and remarkably clear-thinking critic. Taylor gives us no sense of what it was that animated Orwell, other than some almost silly stuff about getting back at people like the headmistress of his school. There is almost a sense in this book of a high-class hatchet job done on Orwell, but I don't want to push that point. What makes Orwell truly important is minimized, and what wasn't important is given a good deal of weight. Perhaps that is the fate of great critics who support no one's ideologies and preconceptions.
   
   This book should be read only with an awareness of its limited approach to the subject. This is not Orwell, but a somewhat interesting display of bits and memorabilia in museum cabinets.
   
   Please see my review of Gordon Bowker's Orwell biography, a superior work (published in the same year) in most respects to Taylor's.



5. I have read many biographies of Orwell before encountering this one, but have learned more about Orwell the person in this book than in all of the others combined. Taylor's insight into the man and sparkling prose style make this a must read.

5 comments about Full of Life: A Biography of John Fante.

1. "Full of Life,: Stephen Cooper's biography of John Fante, is excellent in many ways. It's also, like its subject, flawed. It gets off to a great start, with sympathetic understanding and some brilliantly written passages. But as the book goes on, the author tends to succumb to Biographeritis: dislike of his subject.
   
   It's the biographer's mission to present an honest picture of his subject, warts and all. A book that did nothing but gush over its subject's good qualities wouldn't be worth much. But it's just as uimportant not to get carried away in the other direction, and present the subject in as bad a light as possible, lovingly nurturing every bad thing that everyone has to say bout him (or her), now that the subject is safely dead. It's what J.B. Priestly described as the posthumous assassin, "running out to plunge another knife into the corpse." This is done without trying to ascertain whether or not the charges are actually true, and certainly without taking a look at the not always admirable motives involved. It's not possible to check out every denunciation, of course; but when the accusation is a serious one - cruelty, for instance - the biographer owes it to the person he's writing about to at least make an effort to see if it really happened. In my opinion Cooper lets Fante down in this respect.
   
   By far the worst thing about the book is that there's one episode which I strongly suspect isn't true: the drowning of the kittens. This is a serious charge of cruelty against a dead man who can't defend himself. Given, over, and over, and over again (his acceptance of a rat for a present - when he was drunk, by the way - having his friend pull over to rescue a cat, buying a pig to keep his dog happy, almost breaking up his marriage because he wanted to keep a dog his wife wanted him to get rid of, refusing to get rid of another dog that almost everyone else in the family hated - someone even volunteered to shoot it), how much he loved animals, I find it very hard to believe that Fante could have done this. It was simply out of character, whatever his faults were. At the very least it strains credulity. Yet Cooper reports it as an accepted fact. He should have checked out this alleged incident very carefully, instead of simply taking the word of ex-neighbors who didn't like him, and who still held a grudge (after fifty years!) over a failed joint movie venture. It's fine for Cooper to assert unequivocally that Fante drank too much, stayed out all night, and neglected his wife, because that's the way Fante habitually behaved. He did NOT habitually murder animals. And the usual explanation for aberrant behavior - "Well, he was drunk" - won't wash here, because Fante also behaved tenderly toward animals when he was drunk. In his writing, as well as in his life, Fante had not only love but pity for helpless animals. Cooper must not have read the chapter in "Ask the Dust" where the narrator is sickened by the murder (and he calls it murder) of the calf, and is tormented by pity for the calf's grieving mother. This episode was described with so much revulsion that it hardly seems like the attitude of someone who would drown kittens. I have an alternate theory: I think one or more of the neighborhood boys killed the kittens, and then blamed it on their unpopular neighbor.
   
   Where was Joyce while this was going on? It's hard to believe that this spirited lady would have just stood by passively while Fante the Fiend carried out his murderous action. For that matter, where were his own kids? There's no corroboration by them. How convenient, that everyone in the family was absent that day (which almost never happened), except the Strobel kid. If there's a future edition of this book, I hope Cooper will at least really check out this attack on Fante. At the very least, he owes it to Fante's memory to point out that this seems to be uncharacteristic behavior for someone who was known for his lifelong love of animals.
   
   Cooper's appreciation of Fante's work is much better. I have to say, though, that, like several of the reviewers, he missed the point of "Ask the Dust." He harps on the name-calling and the racial epithets. That's an important component of the book, certainly. But it's not what the book is about, any more than "Vanity Fair" is solely about Becky Sharp, Thackeray's great anti-heroine. "Ask the Dust," like "Vanity Fair" and "Of Human Bondage," examines a basic problem of human existence: why do we love the people who don't love us?
   
   Cooper has a warm appreciation for Fante's writing. As he notes, "Ask the Dust," in addition to being a great Los Angeles book - the city itself, its streets and cafes and boarding houses and skid row, is one of the major characters in the book - has one of the most lyrical and haunting - and saddest - endings ever written. Cooper may not be a fan of Fante the man, but he loves Fante the writer.



2. I hope the interest in "Ask the Dust" (reprint and Hollywood film) will send many readers to this excellent biography. If you want to learn more about Fante and the Los Angeles literary and screenwriting scene of his era, this book is a gold mine. Recognition came late for Fante, and it wouldn't have come at all without Charles Bukowski's advocacy, but this biography, Robert Towne's feature film, and the Independent Lens documentary that aired recently on PBS ("A Sad Flower in the Sand") are helping to rectify the critical neglect. Two comments on the other reviews. Yes, it will be useful in the classroom. I just taught "Ask the Dust" in a course at San Francisco State University, and this work was a huge help. And to those who could do without the endnotes, they were indispensable for me as I researched the life of Fante's friend Carey McWilliams.



3. Lest anyone believe the dribble of the last reviewer who gave Cooper's biography one star, I thought I'd send in a review that at least strives for honesty, to say nothing of accuracy, which that other reviewer made no attempt to show. Stephen Cooper's biography of John Fante is a thoroughly enjoyable if occasionally painful read. Enjoyable because he presents a well-rounded picture of the man who penned such American classics as: Ask The Dust, The Brotherhood of the Grape, My Dog Stupid, Dreams From Bunker Hill, and others, including a number of very fine and moving short stories. Painful, because John Fante certainly was a flawed human being, as this biography clearly shows. To complain that Fante drank, or was lazy, or abused his wife, etc. is silly. What, we can or should only read books by people who are saints? If that's the criteria for what writers we read then there'd be nothing to read on the fiction shelves by either men or women. Should I refrain from reading Claire Boothe Luce or Dorothy Parker because they were less than perfect people? Should I dump my Dostoyevsky books simply because he treated everyone monstrously, or my Dickens, because he was a lousy father and husband? I'm sorry to destroy the illusions of the simpleton who wrote that review, but writers are sometimes petty, self-centered, back-biting, bores, many of whom drink to excess or gamble, or cheat, or womanize, etc., etc. If you want nice problem-free people to emulate go for film stars or musicians, or jocks, right? Maybe certain people shouldn't read biographies, but can instead continue to march along the primrose path believing idiocies like the writers they admire are as perfect as the works they create.
   
   For this person to state something like: "There is nothing new or interesting here, not even a great work of art to point to and wonder. Cooper looks behind the curtain of Fante's existence, finding that whatever wizard we had imagined there had long ago crumbled to dust." --I'm sorry, but that's not even half intelligent, it's sheer wanton stupidity. Yeah, that's why John Fante has admirers from John Fowles all the way down.
   
   Cooper's book gives us the externals that formed John Fante the writer. If that is uninteresting to the previous reviewer, that's sad. That he or she doesn't appreciate Fante work, and feels the need to attack it is pathetic. Fante will long outlast you, and I'd sure hate to see what lies on your bookshelves. Fante's books continue to sell and be reprinted, here in the U.S and in Europe. While there's no accounting for taste, there's no accounting for its absence in this case. Set Fante beside anyone who wrote in the 1930s or 1940s-Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, etc.-and you will see that Fante's writing is not dated, but is incredibly fresh. And while he writes a clean simple prose, at the same time there is poetry there, too. How many writers can you name who are capable of accomplishing that? Add Fante's humor, and you have writing that is a miracle. Sure there are passages that are cruel-life was very cruel for Mexicans, Italians, Philipinos, and others living in the U.S. all vying to fit in as Americans, to survive. And that was the world John Fante worked to depict in his writing. If that a failure of a life, then give me more failures!
   
   Fante's writing is brilliant, but of course you have to have some taste to realize this. And if you've got any sense, you'll find it hilarious; it will make you laugh out loud, and yes, wince on occasion. It will move you, because there's an emotional content in his writing that is sorely lacking in 95% of the writers out there.
   
   Stephen Cooper's biography is not adulatory. Instead, it's honest, as Fante's writing is honest. Cooper writes of the whole man, not a part of him. To the other reviewer who complained that Fante's fictions were so frequently full of fabrication, well, that's why they call it fiction, silly. People do themselves and Fante a huge disservice by assuming what he wrote was autobiographical. Fante clearly infused his character, his alter ego, Arturo Bandini, into a framework wherein he used bits and pieces of real life, but his writing is not a mirror of his life. John Fante the person is not the same as John Fante's writing. Again, for those of you who are troubled by the definitions of `novel' and `fiction,' he made it up.
   
   I say hats off to Stephen Cooper for writing a good solid biography of a man who deserves a much wider audience. Perhaps when the film Ask The Dust comes out in December, and Robert Towne doesn't blow it, that will happen.



4. For a book called "Full of Life," this work is surprisingly flat and boring. Not much happens in the life of John Fante. He drinks a lot, writes a little, drinks some more, abuses his wife, drinks even more, and saves just enough time to drown a sack of kittens in the kitchen sink while his children cry horrified. That's it for the drama, though. There isn't much life here, just a sad example of a generation of gruff and abusive alcoholic men slowly fading into memory. "Life" in these terms seems defined by random violent outbursts, failure and the bottle. Even Cooper's prose, fashioned to echo his idol, falls flat on the page with sentences like, "He was full of piss and vinegar." This isn't a biography as much as a eulogy to a time and a man better left forgotten. Fante's literary achievements were limited in his lifetime at best, perhaps in no small part due to his heavy alcoholism. There is nothing new or interesting here, not even a great work of art to point to and wonder. Cooper looks behind the curtain of Fante's existence, finding that whatever wizard we had imagined there had long ago crumbled to dust. There is no life here, full or otherwise...



5. Overall, a good first biography of John Fante. Fante's extensive screenwriting efforts are documented in detail here, and there are interesting insights into the writing of Ask the Dust. I found some portions a bit dry, like the delving at length into Fante's family tree at the beginning. Likewise, the fifty pages of scholarly Notes at the end are tedious reading and seem superfluous. Invaluable are facts surrounding incidents such as Fante's car accident later in life (Stephen Cooper hinting that perhaps it was an attempt at autocide), and Fante's purchase of a revolver (the biographer suggesting that Fante may have been planning to kill himself). Inexcusable, however, are omissions like the failure to note the recent writing achievements of Fante's son, Dan, whose books are big business in Europe. Dan may have his father's gift of braggadocio, and the curse of ten times the old man's bitterness, but the oversight (?) is bizarre in the context of such an obviously well-researched bio. The few glossed-over gaps in Full of Life are almost to be expected since John Fante's own letters and fictions were so frequently full of fabrication themselves.

No comments about Bolero - The Life Of Maurice Ravel.

5 comments about Another Shot: How I Relived My Life in Less Than a Year.

1. Joe, you seem like a nice and sincere guy, and I would like to have a beer with you sometime, but this book is very boring. In fact it is more interesting to read the programming section in my VCR manual.



2. This funny (and sometime sad) memoir of a midlife crisis, a man remembering the past and wondering what it would have been -- if only he had made some different choices, chosen the other fork in the road. He quotes Joe E. Lewis, "You only live once but, if you work it right, once is enough." He feels he is a man with no regrets, but we all have regrets, for saying the wrong word, for reacting in a bad way to a slight, and for marrying the wrong person.
   
   He starts out with two short stories; the first about Jeff Besos, founder of Amazon.com who used basic logic to start a new frontier in his life. Thank God for Amazon.com! The second was about George Plimpton in New Mexico about chasing bats and a t-shirt too small. This is a story about missed opportunities. He had a mixed-bag journey and lived an 'adventure in possibilities.'
   
   He said, there is 'no sadder story than that of "small regrets'' -- I've had some large regrets, so he's way ahead of me in the game of life experiences. He feels his actions were most accidental, and wished he'd had 'another shot' and ponders life's lottery -- could it have been better? God gave us 'free will' to develop our own potential. If we fail to carry through, it is only because we took the wrong fork in the road of life.
   
   In these twenty chapters, the most important events, he revisited crossroads in hopes of reliving them. We can do that without getting out of our own homes, just get old enough and you will constantly relive what was important and eventful and ALWAYS wish you had done something different. But then, we wouldn't be the person we are now, as life experiences make the man.
   
   Don't we all wish we had acted or reacted differently at times of crisis, and wonder if we could have been happier. No one is really happy these days. Our ancestors accepted their 'lot' in life, but mine weren't happy to have been born poor. Are the rich happy -- only at times! Money does not insure happiness now or in the past. Oh, it helps to have the good things in life at your fingertips, but they are just objects. They are not life. Only accomplishment and fulfillment at any age can truly be termed happiness. Be proud of what came your way as it won't come again.
   
   I value certain people, not the many possessions I lug around. The past is in the past and cannot be resurrected. I was happy once, the few years I sang on several local talent shows on radio, television, and on the stage of the Tennessee Theatre (back then in my youth). It didn't matter then whether you were from a wealthy family or a railroad man's household. Talent is talent. I was happy again when my first child was such a delightful, bright, beautiful extension of myself. He's always thought he inherited his curiosity and intelligence from his dad! Wrong -- as was the second one feeling that his writing ability came from his English teacher dad. I told him when he first started that it had come from me. Did he listen, did he believe, of course not!
   
   Well, I was rewarded with the 'postscript', born 13 years after his brothers. He wasn't my 'Ligeia' but finally someone just like me! Later, his daughter Chrissy was proof of the gene pool-- like her grandmother in many ways, even looks. You can't fool Mother Nature. Well, her outgoing personality and spark put the eight-yr.old me in the shade.
   
   Joe Kite, a seasoned journalist, has traveled the world (and didn't have to pay for any of it), had life experiences we all would give 'an arm and a leg' for. And yet, he questioned how different choices might have made him happier. Not in the romance department -- he found his soulmate and is still married to the mother of his children. They live in Pennsylvania, but his voice does not have the harshness in speech as my sister-in-law who was from that area. Believe me, they are as different from a Southerner as black and white. He sound like a delightful person to know. Previously, he had published WISDOM OF OUR FATHERS. Now, this 'running around in his mind' memoir is full of his own wisdom.



3. Another Shot by Joe Kita, I listened to on
   the way to my vacation. In this book, the author tries to relive, or correct his regrets.
   The book made me wonder about my own regrets. I dislike that word. Regret implies
   that I would change something in my past. Each thing that happened to me, each
   decision, lead me to the place I am now. I try to actively design my life and I am
   intensely happy and pleased with my life. So although I am sometimes curious about
   "what ifs" in my life, I can't truly regret any decision, because any minor change may
   have altered my present.

   In spite of disagreeing with the author's premise, I still enjoyed parts of this book.
   The chapter about his mother is hilarious. Is it worth it to read the whole book? I
   don't know. The book is written in a hokey way, which can be a bit cloying.

   http://home.att.net/~bunsonmars/




4. Disappointing is the word that comes to mind having read this book. I loved the premise, and even some of the specific regrets, such as trying out for the high school basketball team again, and living like you're filthy rich for a week. My amusement ended quickly, as the author began injecting his own share of disfunctionality into the book. I quickly found out that he's a fallen catholic, doesn't get along with his mother, never made peace with his father, and varoius other "issues". Before long, I could no longer relate and stopped reading. I did finally finish the book, but it wasn't worth it.



5. Joe Kita acted on twenty of his what-ifs and he reports on the process and the results in a fun way. I laughed a lot and shed a couple of tears. Then I began making my own list of things I've never done but want to do, or things I did which I'd like to do over and see if I could get different results. Seeing Joe try and succeed - or try and not succeed - made me want to try.

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