Amazon.com
Snow White's stepmother looks like a pussycat compared to the monster under which Adeline Yen Mah suffered. The author's memoir of life in mainland China and--after the 1949 revolution--Hong Kong is a gruesome chronicle of nonstop emotional abuse from her wealthy father and his beautiful, cruel second wife. Chinese proverbs scattered throughout the text pithily covey the traditional world view that prompted Adeline's subservience. Had she not escaped to America, where she experienced a fulfilling medical career and a happy marriage, her story would be unbearable; instead, it's grimly fascinating: Falling Leaves is an Asian Mommie Dearest.
Book Description
Born in 1937 in a port city a thousand miles north of Shanghai, Adeline Yen Mah was the youngest child of an affluent Chinese family who enjoyed rare privileges during a time of political and cultural upheaval. But wealth and position could not shield Adeline from a childhood of appalling emotional abuse at the hands of a cruel and manipulative Eurasian stepmother. Determined to survive through her enduring faith in family unity, Adeline struggled for independence as she moved from Hong Kong to England and eventually to the United States to become a physician and writer.
A compelling, painful, and ultimately triumphant story of a girl's journey into adulthood, Adeline's story is a testament to the most basic of human needs: acceptance, love, and understanding. With a powerful voice that speaks of the harsh realities of growing up female in a family and society that kept girls in emotional chains,
Falling Leaves is a work of heartfelt intimacy and a rare authentic portrait of twentieth-century China.
Customer Reviews:
The Plight Of An Unloved Child.......2007-10-11
Although this book was difficult at times to read, the author did keep me fascinated with her story. She has an ease of writing that very much feels as if she is having a conversation with the reader, and the book just flows.
The story is one that is ageless: a man marries a woman and they have several children (in this case 5). When the youngest is born, the woman dies from complications, and the man in his loneliness quickly finds another woman to marry. He concerns himself more with outward appearances than with character, and ends up with wife #2 who is controlling, domineering, and wishes she had been wife #1 instead of wife #2. She really doesn't care for the fact that her husband has 5 children from wife #1, but no matter. Since her husband is weak and does as she wishes, she can treat them as she likes. Which isn't pleasant.
Adeline is the youngest of the 5 siblings and therefore the recipient of not only her stepmother's wrath, but most often her 4 siblings as well. Unlike some children, Adeline never seems to truly stand up for herself, and that might be her personality or it might be cultural. Whatever it is, it defines her.
Some reviewers here think Adeline is "whiny", especially after she reaches adulthood. Perhaps. However, if anyone knows somebody who was treated as though they were unwanted and/or unloved as a child - and my mother was such a one - then they might very well see the same behavior Adeline portrays as an adult.
I thought this book was fascinating and a terrific tale of the healing power of the human spirit. At times I just wished I could have reached through the pages of this book and snatched Adeline away to a safe place where she could be nutured and feel safe.
Read it entirely in one night.......2007-09-05
I found this book while browsing the library and borrowed it. I thought it would be good reading material for my daily subway rides since the book wasn't too long at all.
I had a quiet evening, so I started reading. Page by page I turned and when I finished the book it was 1am in the morning. It was definitely a page turner. The reader is kept on their toes to find out what comes next.
I was truly touch by Adeline's story and there were a couple of tear-jerking scenes. This book reminds me a lot of the 1st Harry Potter book somehow. Both tell the story of a rejected child living with sinister relatives.
Adeline's story is different from many other books in that she was a rejected child from a rich family that could have given her everything. Many memoiors tell of a very poor childhood, so I really liked that this was different. She was pretty much poor in a rich family.
I was full of rage when I found out Lydia was backstabbing her & how her brothers are still jerks as adults. Inheritance issues always bring out the nastiest in people. Ultra-rich families do not usually fare well & are usually the subject of drama serial TV in Hong Kong.
Lydia can just shove it...she is just about as dragonlady as Niang for what she did.
Edgar...gosh I wonder if he made a good doctor at all.
James...he's such a timid turtle & it got annoying to see him still like that as a grown adult.
Susan...she married into an ultra-rich family and didn't even care for the inheritance. I was happy for her as she was able to let go of her family.
Adeline...I wish she would stop being the nice person all the time. It was so unfair to her to be taken advantage of even as an adult (Lydia two-timing her while Adeline was willing to help Lydia's song, putting up with 1st abusive husband, still scared of Niang as an adult).
I really wish she had the courage to cut her family off and carve her own happiness with her own family (husband and 2 sons and future grandchildren). I really hope that Adeline is able to/or has already done so. I hope she is having a much happier life right now :)
A PERFECT STUDY OF SCAPEGOATING! ADELINE, YOU GO, GIRL!!!!.......2007-08-10
i have to respectfully disagree with Jazmanian here. No, not 'any family therapist would tell you being cut off from your family of origin would not do any good to your own family.' Even apes have families, and 'family of origin' is not always a safe place.
This book was ALL about moving on and finding blessings in the hand one is dealt. The author had one family member who truly loved her unconditionally and without deviation. Her discovery that her father truly did love her, in spite of his cowardice and weakness of character, gave her some satisfaction; but to realize that throughout her years of emotional torture, there was always one member of her immediate family who had never hurt her and loved her unconditionally, incontrovertibly - namely,her Aunt Baba - was enough for her to move on in her life, taking comfort in the love and support of her husband and child.
The abuse this woman endured was mind-boggling. The incidents with her pet duckling, the orange juice, and being sent to a boarding school that ALSO served as an orphanage was deplorable. But the most painful part of the book to me was when she and her husband accidently walked into that hotel room to find all her siblings having a celebration party to which she was not made aware. That broke my heart, because it hit so close to home; I experienced a similar incident with my own family.
This book was a great comfort to me because I learned that I'm not the only child this has happened to; my similarly dysfunctional family did the same sort of things to me (add in sexual abuse and daily beatings, and there you have it).
Sometimes one must accept that the family is sick and will never be healthy, and realize that one must remove one's self in order to, as you worded it, "do any good to your own family". Had she kept in contact with her sicklings, er, I mean, siblings, 'her own family' would surely have been exposed to their pathological toxicity. Her moving on was the best gift she had to give her family. Past behavior is a pretty good indication of future behavior; why would she want to expose her husband and children to these people?
As one who finally 'pulled the plug' from her bio toxic family, I applaud her for letting these people go.
Tragic beginning, whiny ending........2007-08-03
I enjoyed the beginning of this book. It presented a slice of history about which I was uninformed, wrapped in the personal true story of a little girl persecuted by her family. By the end of the book, though, I felt the author was more determined to make her case against her stepmother than to write a compelling story. The book did not hold my interest to the end, although I did finish it. I wanted to celebrate the triumph of the author over her painful start in life. Instead, I read an endless list of family misdeeds. Victimization of a helpless child is tragic. Wallowing in it as an adult is annoying.
Captivating memoir.......2007-07-10
This book had me very engrossed and actually crying. It doesn't overtly try to teach a lesson or philosophize, but it still makes you think about how it is that people can be so heartless, because we all know, they can.
Amazon.com
Another casualty of the Vietnam War, Danielle Trussoni has told her story in Falling Through the Earth with bravado, pride, sadness, and candor. Her father, Daniel, served as a tunnel rat, one of the incredibly brave men who went into the webs of tunnels and rooms searching for Vietnamese guerillas hiding out underground. The heat and stench, the courage combined with fear, the claustrophobic confinement, and the incessant tension are recounted with an immediacy that only one who has been there, or knows someone who has, could tell. In fact, Danielle Trussoni went to Vietnam and was guided through the tunnels, trying to follow, literally, in her father's footsteps.
The Trussoni family of Onalaska, Wisconsin, is famous for bar fights and not much else. Daniel is a thug like his brothers, all of whom pride themselves on being tough guys who might just be mobbed up, although there is no proof of that.
Trussoni Thanksgivings were like boxing matches. There was sure to be a rumble on the front lawn of my grandparents' house and a rematch at the tavern down the street... A little blood before dinner was what aperitifs were to other families.
In this atmosphere, Danielle, her sister Kelly, and her brother Matt are trying to raise themselves, or just stay out of the way. After getting a job and some sense of self, Mom takes on a boyfriend and asks Dad to leave. According to Danielle, Dad is pretty broken up about the departure, so she goes to live with him and is treated to a steady round of women callers. The other two children stay with their Mom. Most evenings, Daniel takes Danielle to Roscoe's, the neighborhood tavern, where she sits and watches him get drunk and tell his Vietnam stories. Over and over again. Every so often, he forgets her and she has to make her own way home.
Danielle is endlessly forgiving of this case-hardened vet who is relentlessly mean, paranoid and petty. He is a prototype of the guy who came home and didn't know why he was a survivor. Trussoni has captured the essence of being in bloody battle one day and home the next, and then trying to make sense of it all.
Alternating chapters tell of her father's time in Vietnam, her own journey there, and their messy lives--starting with the divorce and continuing until her adulthood. Family secrets are revealed; Danielle realizes that her mother was not the only person at fault in the breakup of the marriage and that her defense of her father was not always appropriate.
She is finally able to say, after writing him a letter outlining her grievances, "I wanted you to know I was hurt by the way I grew up. ...I wanted you to know how hard I've tried to get through to you, how much work it has been for me." There has never been a daughter more loyal than Danielle Trussoni. --Valerie Ryan
Book Description
From her charismatic father, Danielle Trussoni learned how to rock and roll, outrun the police, and never shy away from a fight. Spending hour upon hour trailing him around the bars and honky-tonks of La Crosse, Wisconsin, young Danielle grew up fascinated by stories of her dads adventures as a tunnel rat in Vietnam, where hed risked his life crawling head first into narrow passageways to search for American POWs.
Customer Reviews:
well written.......2007-09-19
I read Trussoni's memoir and found it to be well-written, insightful, and subtlely compelling. It's not the kind of thing that you "can't put down," but it grabs you enough to want to pick the thing back up again once you have set it down.
My only complaint, really, is that it felt like the whole thing was a build-up to something, but I never really saw what it was. And the epilogue confused any sense of what I had Thought the build-up was for.
Casualties of War.......2007-09-12
Danielle Trussoni, author of Falling through the Earth, is as much a casualty of the Viet Nam war as was her father, Dan, who returned from that war as damaged goods, a man unable to show his wife and children that he loved them. Trussoni's benign neglect of his children forced them to grow up tough and able to solve their own problems because he was a firm follower of the old adage that "whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger." Sadly, their situation shows clearly how the crippling aftereffects of combat can be so easily passed on from one generation to the next, making one wonder where the cycle finally ends.
Dan Trussoni was a volunteer tunnel rat in Viet Nam, one of those incredibly brave men who went alone into the underground tunnel system that allowed Viet Cong soldiers to disappear at will and that provided them with a safe haven to recover from wounds and to hide food and weapons until they were needed. These young American soldiers, armed with little more than a pistol and a flashlight, had to crawl through booby traps and utter darkness never knowing what awaited them around the next corner as they tried to clean out the systems they discovered. It is little wonder that they came back with mental scars that never really heal.
Danielle became aware at an early age of how her father's Viet Nam experience impacted his life. She found the pictures of dead bodies and the human skull that he brought home. She also found that she was largely going to have to raise herself after her parents split up and she decided to live with her father. Dan Trussoni's idea of a little quality time with his daughter was to bring her to his favorite neighborhood bar in which she spent so much time that she was considered to be one of the regulars.
Life for the Trussoni kids was full of surprises, including the appearance of an illegitimate half-sister and a full sister who had been placed for adoption by their parents who felt too young and overwhelmed to keep her when she was born. Danielle was her father's daughter in every way, fearless, tough, brash and willing to take whatever life threw her way. That personality led her to Viet Nam, alone, where she saw for herself some of the same sights and experienced a little of the fear that her father felt while he was there, even forcing herself to "tour" one of the famous tunnel systems with a guide.
Falling through the Earth, with chapters that alternate between views of growing up in the Trussoni family, Dan's Viet Nam war, and Danielle's own trip there, is a fascinating book, one that makes me wish that we would make absolutely certain that our wars are really necessary before we send our young men into them.
A Disappointment.......2007-09-11
I was bored with this book but finished it because I wanted it to be better! I kept reading, hoping for something. Never found it!!!!
Book review.......2007-07-18
Incredible book, Danielle lived through a period of time that was the darkest of our countries history, except for now, and lived to tell about it. Not only dealing with the VN war but the consequences of a father with post traumatic stress syndrome that affected her and her families lives. For her to detail it as she did and have the brilliance to turn it into the literary expression of "my life with a VN vet" is incredible. A must read!
LaCrosse.......2007-07-09
This was an interesting book regarding the effects of war on an entire family, not just the veteran. It was more interesting to our book club as these were local people and local happenings. I missed the discussion at book club, but found out it was quite active and interesting.
Book Description
In this dazzling, hilarious memoir, best-selling author ofKinflicks Lisa Alther chronicles her search for the missing--oftenmysterious--branches of her family tree.Most of us grow up thinking we know who we are and where we come from. LisaAlther's mother hailed from New York, her father from Virginia, and everyday they reenacted the Civil War at home in East Tennessee. Then one nighta grizzled babysitter with brown teeth told Lisa about the Melungeons:six-fingered child-snatchers who hid in cliff caves outside town.Forgetting about these creepy kidnappers until she had a daughter of herown, Lisa learned that the Melungeons were actually a group of dark-skinnedpeople--some with extra thumbs--living in isolated pockets in the South.But who were they? Where did they come from? Were they the descendants ofSir Walter Raleigh's Lost Colony, or of shipwrecked Portuguese or Turkishsailors? Or were they the children of European frontiersmen, Africanslaves, and Native Americans? Theories abounded, but no one seemed to knowfor sure.Learning that a cousin had had his extra thumbs removed, Lisa set out todiscover who these mysterious Melungeons really were and why hergrandmother wouldn't let her visit their Virginia relatives. Were thereMelungeons in the family tree? Lisa assembled a hoard of clues over theyears, but DNA testing finally offered answers.Part sidesplitting travelogue, part how--and how not--to climb your familytree, Kinfolks shimmers with wicked humor, illustrating just howwacky and wonderful our human family really is.
Customer Reviews:
Humour and History.......2007-10-11
Lisa Alther hasn't lost her sense of humour or her keen insight into human nature. This is a great book and I learned a lot about history of the Southeast of which I knew nothing before reading this. I found it very interesting and I also loved learning more about Lisa's life as she is a favorite author of mone.
Irresistible!.......2007-09-18
Lisa (LYE-ZA) Alther's latest, Kinfolks, falling off the family tree, is irresistible!
Kinfolks is the most humorous and entertaining book I have read in years! (And I've probably read 15,000 in my lifetime of 81 years.) It also introduces you to a very interesting woman who is unafraid to reveal her weaknesses and foibles. She is also a marvelous role model of openness and self-effacement for the young as well as a reassurance for all senior citizens.
Do not be fooled this is only about ancestors or genes. The genealogy and DNA searches provide the structure for very wise and unhurtful humor--a very rare quality.
Most Americans no longer live where they grew up. What they gained by living among strangers, what they lost by uprooting, and what they may profit from by accepting ALL their roots, traits, and history are hilariously illustrated.
The Melungeons, interesting as they may be, only provide a vehicle for Alther's search for more self-knowledge by a very gifted writer. The writing draws one on as Alther reminds us of cogent points through artful means: she contrasts northeast Appalachia church message boards' weekly quotes with Vermont bumper stickers to give us insights into two very different responses to extremes of the Appalachians. She teases her family who seem recognizably familiar, and she tantalizes us with the potential of what DNA may one day tell us about ourselves and others.
Great Story of Climbing the Family Tree.......2007-09-08
This was a great book. It is styled like an autobiography and tells the tale of the authors childhood through adult years, focusing on family, culture, and the things she learned about her family through the years.
Some LOL moments but..........2007-08-19
"Kinfolks: Falling Off the Family Tree," I had very mixed feelings about this book at points loving it and at other points just about abhoring it. I am a scholar on race studies and I found it refreshing to take a break from heady academic reading to this colorfully written biographic memoir. Two things stood out that annoy me about the book: 1. Sometimes I felt as though I was listening in on the conversation of a batty lady because she doesn't edit her thoughts very often and # 2. is the dwelling on the Melungeon--Turkish connection. Not to make this review too convoluted, issue #1 is what left me laughing out loud (the LOL mentioned in the review title) at points--Lisa Alther has an easy to listen to, storyteller's voice as a writer that immediately pulls the reader in. Issue #2 grated on my nerves because while I'm sure there is some Turkish blood in the Melungeons just from understanding the population distributions in early American history I bet that quantum is lower than the African or Native American content. It seems as though exotic ethnicity that is non-African is the flavor of the day, sadly showing a hint of racism still existent even in highly mixed raced group of Americans. Moreover, I find the tendency to explain away several Native American customs and languages of the various indigenous groups of what is now Appalachia as originating in Turkey and parts of the Middle East disturbing and insulting to these long-standing, well developed cultures. It also just plain seems like a stretch toward the ridiculous that she and her distant cousin, well-respected expert on the subject of Melungeons, Brent Kennedy continue to take. Melungeons such as Lisa Alther have a unique opportunity to step above the fray of a largely racist America by virtue of their mixed blood lines--rather than doing so Melungeons whose beliefs are aligned with Alther's are showing us by clinging to the romantic idea of having Romany blood, ample Turkish and other Middle Eastern heritage that even they despise Blackness even it is mixed right into their DNA and to some extent into their phenotypes (physical appearance such as brown skin and curly or wavy hair). Lisa Alther had a unique opportunity while researching for "Kinfolks" to reach out to her African American neighbors and Native American communities, breaking new ground right in racially charged Tennessee, the Carolinas and Virginia--visiting and interviewing people in her blood lines with the same surnames that have culturally blended into the "Black" or "Indian" communities right under her nose to get some answers as well but instead she mounted an international search for answers from exotic lands for answers to ethnic and cultural questions that might well be right here in America in her own backyard.
Not a History Book.......2007-06-13
Well written, easy reading. But if you are looking for the history of the Melungeons, take this book very lightly. Borders on "Cultural Genocide". As with the works of Brent Kennedy and Elizabeth Hirschman, a very poor attempt at rewritting the history of the Melungeons.
Book Description
Thinking about retiring to Mexico? San Miguel de Allende, for 50 years an art colony drawing many U.S., Canadian and British citizens seeking an exciting and affordable change of pace for their retirement, is located 165 miles northwest of Mexico City on the central plateau.
This book is the story of two women who made the leap to a whole new way of life, retiring on Social Security even to a town considered one of the most expensive, and desirable, in Mexico.
They share their joys, their mistakes, their problems, their new outlook on life in this very personal love story to San Miguel. They describe in vivid detail the almost-daily fiestas, their humorous errors in learning Spanish, and their new outlook on world history from learning Mexicans' point of view. They even tell what they pay for almost everything, from hospital visits to ice cream cones.
And they're living a far better life than anywhere in the U.S. on Social Security, even in a town where people keep saying it can't be done. They're doing it, and they tell you how.
Customer Reviews:
Starts out kind of boring, gets better..........2007-09-18
Reading this book is very much like listening to a charming, somewhat eccentric neighbor give you her detailed impressions and opinions after an extended vacation. Sometimes it gets pretty boring, at other times it's what you actually might want to know, depending greatly on who you are and what you are looking for. There are many descriptions of festivals from the point of view of a confused gringa for example. For me, that got tiring. At times the author's personal concerns have very little to do with San Miguel de Allende.
My biggest problem with the book was that other reviews made it seem as though this book would give me a great insider view of SMA and help me to decide whether to travel there to consider retirement. What it actually does is give a very personal look at living there rather than a general slice of life. There is nothing wrong with that, except it wasn't what I was hoping for.
There were items of general interest that had value to me, especially at the end.
Gives the details you need to know..........2007-08-15
There are few books with up-to-date information on moving from the U.S. to Mexico, especially to San Miguel de Allende. Although there are many personal anecdotes that may not give "how-to" information, all in all it delivers on its promise to give you a feel for what it would be like to live in San Miguel de Allende and what it would cost.
Everything you wanted to know about SMA..........2007-07-23
"Falling...in Love with San Miguel" by Carol & Norma is both a truly personal account of this colonial mecca in Mexico's northern central highlands as well as also being a deep and broad examination of the A to Z, soup to nuts overview of the town's Mexican citizens and the matrix of the Gringo-expatriate community. It's a social investigation of the overall community, and especially it's a Survivor's Guide to SMA...chokablok with hundreds upon hundreds of personal experience anecdotes of this newcomer couple over a several year arc blended with a history and a respectacle geographic tour of the town and its environs.
In the overall, it's personal and direct as well as comprehensive and it's a very, very good look at most everything about SMA for the visitor and for those with half an eye to settling in this unique area of Mexico.
Amazing Journey to a Spectacular Destination.......2007-03-20
Falling...in Love with San Miguel: Retiring to Mexico on Social Security, is an amazing book. I read the book non-stop and was upset when I had to stop for things like eating and sleeping. The humour was so wonderful I had to stop reading to clear the tears from my eyes. The journey that these two amazing women took, shows others that the trip is do-able. As my husband and I approach retirement age and our own trip to San Miguel, we have a blueprint for a start-up in that magical colonial Mexican city.
Bravo Carol Schmidt and Norma Hair, you have shown your courage, humanity and joy for life in this terrific book.
We plan to use the lessons from your book on our move to San Miguel.
A great read!.......2007-01-18
The adventures of Carol and Norma had me entertained until the end. The descriptions of life there--the food, clothing, sounds, and smells--all made me feel as if I were there again. Carol has an infectious writing style that I wish more authors possessed.
Customer Reviews:
damn funny........2005-01-14
If you're a tortured artist, a sucker for wit, a would-be critic, a bit of loser when it comes to attractive women, Do you have a passion for bohemian culture, want to travel around europe? Do you have a hard time trying to hold down menial jobs? Have you got a university education? Well, then "Falling towards england" is your book. If you've watched Clive in "post-cards", and remember his hillarious deadpan voice, you'll laugh out loud as you read his hard-to-put down 2nd installment within his "unreliable memoirs" series. If you're a bit of comedian and a bit of a geek at uni, then reading this book will help relieve the pain a little bit as James' details countless romantically inept experiences which he includes in what he calls "Another chapeter in the history of what never happened". pure gold.
* keep an eye out for the talking book version. listening to it is damn funny.
A CLEVER BOY.......2004-07-15
Clive James should be 65 by now, if the arithmetic of the years works in the same way for him as for me. This volume of his memoirs, the second, was issued in 1985, but presumably it calls on diaries kept in his 20's, the period the book covers, so one can't really gauge how it reflects his maturation.
His greatest strength and his main weakness are one and the same thing. He produces some brilliant one-liners, but so many of them, and so similar in style, that they become just a little wearisome over the length of even a shortish book. I became familiar with him first as the BBC film pundit and then as the television critic of The Observer on Sundays. Within the scale of a half-hour programme or a Sunday review he was absolutely unsurpassable for wit and originality. He did various other tv programmes over the years, and I remember in particular a series on a tour he had made in eastern Europe, at the time still the Evil Empire of fond memory. There was a clip of a rock band consisting of various balding 40ish gents in dull suits, on which James commented in his flat Australian accent `They don't just look like secret policemen, they sing like secret policemen'. Does that have you rolling in the aisles? It did me. It still does, and this book rarely goes two pages in succession without something of the kind. As a writer of English he is a consummate workman on his own terms. The tone is studiously light and informal, but the expression is never careless or cheap. Indeed his other fault as a stylist is a kind of demotic pretentiousness. The relaxed and plain-Joe paragraphs are liberally larded with obscure literary and cultural allusions, and it would serve him right if some readers find this patronising. What do you make of a chapter-heading `Solvitur acris James', for instance? I happen to recognise the reference to the ode of Horace starting `Solvitur acris hiems' (Sharp winter melts) but not only will it totally escape many, perhaps most, it doesn't have all that much point anyway in its context.
The period narrated is from his arrival in England in 1962 until just before he went up to Cambridge. As a document of an impoverished, chaotic, Hogarthian gin-lane existence it is simply brilliant. It would be hard to describe the feel of his account as precisely introspective - Rabelaisian might be nearer the mark. In saying that, I begin to suspect that James's manner is beginning to infect me too - the style of Rabelais is nothing like what you might expect from its English dictionary definition or the common usage of the word insofar as it has a common usage. Towards the end I thought I detected a distinctly deeper tone. I wonder what he could really do if he really tried.
Very funny and clever!.......1997-12-30
This is one of a series of autobiographical books from Clive James - Unreliable Memoirs and May Week Was in June being the others - which take Clive from his boyhood in Australia to the hallowed halls of Cambridge University. Clive has a clever, satirical and self-deprecating style. The humor is sly, very personal, and tends to creep up on you. It helps if you have heard him speak and can imagine the text in his rhythmic, expressive voice. The book, although written from the vantage point of Clive's current, and considerable, fame as a television presenter and journalist, does not endow Clive with any more talent than he had at that time. In fact you begin to wonder how he would ever make his mark, let alone a living. The characters he introduces are rich and colorful, presented honestly, to be liked or hated, much as Clive did. The pace is easy and undemanding, it's a gentle book, but not wimpy, rather it is very much in the style of the author himself. I highly recommend reading the books in sequence - Unreliable Memoirs is first - but if not possible, this one is a great place to start to appreciate Clive's work.
Book Description
Coming of age poor in spirit in the America of plenty is an old story that is yet endlessly new, beginning afresh every time a confused teenager tries to make sense of his privileged place in the world. Eli Hastings got a head start on this when his idealistic, permissive parents divorced, and he sought answers by sneaking out at night to play chicken with freight trains, write graffiti, and get high with friends. This youthful rebellion included an arrest and weekend in jail for drug possession and later jail for an act of civil disobedience during the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle. Hastings recounts how a privileged, white, fiercely leftist American male tries to make sense of himself in relation to the contrary people and situations he finds in books and his travels to Cuba and Central America.
Falling Room is the tale of how one man matures through the sometimes violent blessing of social change and finds himself--and a sense of purpose--through the loss of innocence and naiveté. Reflecting on the firsthand experience of hip-hop and substance abuse, of the fracturing of family, the loss of his father, and of the imperialism of the United States, Hastings’s story offers a new and moving look at how families, nations, and individuals survive and heal.
Amazon.com
"If you like gossip, you'll adore Ex-Friends," columnist Liz Smith has said. And, boy, does archconservative Norman Podhoretz's account of his bitter splits with important American intellectuals rollick. See Norman Mailer, whom critic Podhoretz gave a crucial early boost, get naked and attempt a three-way with his girlfriend and Podhoretz! (Podhoretz tried orgies, pot, and speed, but hated them as much as Kerouac's and Bellow's novels). Hear Mailer's tale after he stabbed his wife almost to death and ran straight to Podhoretz's place! Thrill as critic Allen Tate challenges editor William Barrett to a death-duel over Ezra Pound's Bollingen Award! As Woody Allen said of the literati Podhoretz calls "the Family," "They only kill their own."
Ex-Friends is a nifty if one-sided sketch of the intellectual gang wars, and it captures people more two-faced than does a Cubist painting. After ideas, writes Podhoretz, the Family's second passion was "gossiping with the wittiest possible malice about anyone who had the misfortune not to be present." Podhoretz only discovered Hannah Arendt's faked friendship by reading the published letters of Arendt and Mary McCarthy, and he nails her for her German chauvinism and impenetrable arrogance. He trashes Allen Ginsberg, who published Podhoretz's first poem, for Ginsberg's outrageous grandstanding, and because homosexuality outrages him. He liked Lillian Hellman partly because she gave glamorous parties, and stomps her for loyalty to Stalin's party and her prose ("an imitation of Hammett's imitation of Hemingway"). He skewers many besides the celebs in his subtitle, including Joseph Heller, whose Catch-22 he helped make a hit. He won Jackie Onassis's affection by returning her put-down with a quick "F--- you," like the Brooklyn street tough he was and remains. Mailer betrayed him for not getting him invited to Jackie's party.
The Family had big ideas--and, as Podhoretz proves, egos as big as thin-skinned dodo eggs. --Tim Appelo
Book Description
Ex-Friends is filled with brilliant portraits of some of the cultural icons who defined our time. While it has some of the elements of a personal diary, it is also a journal de combat describing the intellectual and social turbulence of the 60s and 70s and showing how the literary living room was transformed into a political battleground where the meaning of America was fought night by night.
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In Ex-Friends, Norman Podhoretz tells the highly dramatic story of five famous fights which cost him some notable friends. Allen Ginsberg, Lionel and Diana Trilling, Hannah Arendt, Lillian Hellman, and Norman Mailer come alive in these pages, sometimes comically, sometimes affectionately, and sometimes scathingly. Podhoretz gives thanks for having known this stellar group, credits them for what they brought to his life and his education, and candidly explains why his friendship with each came to an end. One of the few people to have been so intimately involved with this "family" of writers and thinkers, Podhoretz sheds light on the nature of friendship -- particularly in relation to people for whom ideas about politics, the arts, and the society around them are virtually matters of life and death. Ex-Friends will make an elder generation of intellectuals nostalgic for a time when the brightest lights of the day gathered in New York living rooms for drinks and talk of the highest kind. It will make a younger generation yearn for a time when public debate had a more urgent and a more personalized forum -- as searing as that could sometimes be.
Customer Reviews:
The Zionist's Jerry Springer.......2007-07-23
Podhoretz has received the Presidential Medal of Honor.
He's a bit too old for this silliness and smearing, but smearing is what he does well.
A juvenile, 'National Enquirer'-worthy account of wealthy, so-called intellectual, low-lifes.
It is an account of the exchanges of Zionist traitors who influence US government.
Sparring intellectuals.......2005-10-18
Norman Podhoretz was a New York intellectual in the 1950's-60's, once editor of Commentary magazine. A left-leaning writer then, in the early 70's he began leaning right and became one of the "founding fathers" of neoconservatism. He was an anti-Communist who rebelled against the anti-American bent of the 60's radicals. (The thought of Jane Fonda all decked out in her love beads sitting down with the North Vietnamese leadership to trash all things American still gives neocons the heebie-jeebies.)
This was when he began breaking with old friends, such as the ones named in the book's title. Most of these people (taken from Podhoretz's viewpoint) are not very pleasant. (Is there anything more vicious than an intellectual scorned?) But Podhoretz is very much on the defensive, and like the "lady who protests too much," makes the reader wary. Whether you go along with his politics or not, I thought it was a pretty interesting book anyway.
A lively look at American intellectual life in the fifties.......2005-05-16
Norman Podhoretz is one of the most important American intellectuals of the Post- War period. His shift away from the Left toward a Conservative position helped mark a new period in American intellectual life. In this memoir he writes about the ' friends' of a former time, each of whom is a distinguished 'name' by themselves. Allen Ginsberg, Hannah Arendt, the Trillings, Lionel and Diana, Lillian Hellman and Norman Mailer. Podhoretz blends the personal anecodote with the ideological quarrel in explaining his estrangement from these friends. At one point he talks about how their radical indulgence in their own appetites led to a kind of moral chaos which he understood as destructive and damaging.
There is a question raised by many readers of the morality of turning on old friends in this way, and writing as if one were the only righteous man among a bunch of misguided moral morons. Other readers point out the possible envy motive given the fact that all the people he writes about are probably considered by most to be more important ' creative figures ' than him. Certainly Arendt, and Mailer fit this category.
Podhoretz however should not be underestimated and he as a critic , and as a moral and literary guide is a person of considerable weight and stature. I would not say that everything here suits my taste, but there is a great deal of interesting writing about the intellectual life of the American fifties, and of some of its major characters.
It takes an egotist to know one.......2004-12-06
Podhoretz, the man who recently said what's the big deal about a few thousand dead G.I.'s in Iraq considering what's at stake (without having a clue that nothing is at stake), Norman disparages the artist/intellectual/egotists of the 60's/70's that don't fall in line with his ideology while today he lauds the conservative egomaniacs that have brought our country to its low level of intellectualism and turned a nation founded by intellectual deists into a Disneyworld of McReligion. But it's all fine so long as we make the world safe for democracy. Norman seems to think there is something hypocritical about professing social justice and being a small time celebrity, when in fact, as Freud said, the partial motivation of any "artist" is fame and the love of women (speaking I assume of male artists). Einstein enjoyed the limelight; everyone enjoys the limelight and everyone has his or her weaknesses. Have you ever read Einstein's poetry? YUK! So to disparage the ones you don't happen to like is a bit disingenuous. The true irony is that only an attention-seeking egotist would write a book about such trivial nonsense. But this is all in keeping with a man who explains what writers should be writing if they only knew better, ex., he applauded James Baldwin's early career because he was on his way to being another Henry James; he condemns him when Baldwin's attention turned to racism in America. Imagine that: a black writer distraught over racism in America. The very idea! I think Norm's whole problem can be traced back to his youth, which he relates in his autobiography "Making It," talking about taking the subway from culturally challenged Brooklyn to Manhattan, growing up as a nice Jewish boy, the son of modest working class parents, attending college, and rising among the ranks of the intellectual New York crowd. Nowadays, Norm is comparing the invasion of Iraq to the invasion of Normandy, and explains that Iraq will become democratic by using as an analogy post-WW II Germany's quick transition to a modern democracy (of course, with the help of 2 1/2 million allied troops occupying it). How did this guy ever have friends to begin with???
Unusual journey of an ex-Leftist intellectual in New York.......2004-08-20
This highly readable book is going to be despised on the far left for exposing some of the key intellectual icons/godparents of the movement as insidious buffoons. A useful and brief companion book written years ago for some context would be Tom Wolfe's Radical Chic/Mau Mauing the Flakcatchers.
Book Description
In early June of 2002, I left the United States and traveled to the locus of my own soul. If one were to look at a map, they would say that my destination was Israel (specifically the Judean Desert) and that I had traveled 6,497 miles. But in actuality, I traveled much farther than that-upon a road whose traversing is not measured in miles, but by the deepening of the human experience, love and acceptance; and not by direction (for there is only one direction-inward). And whose perilous mountains, cliffs, and valleys were not composed of stone or sand, but of one's own psyche (the most dangerous of the world's creations).
In Bill Elliott's forty days in the Judean desert he learns many deep and poignant truths about himself, his world, and his relationship with God. He reflects back on significant (and insignificant) moments in his life and learns from them as well-his parents dying at his home when he was 12, a dream he had about TV psychiatrist Frasier, the comical relationship with his best friend Dave who later committed suicide, and other incidents.
This book is truly in the vein of the introspective works of Anne Lamott, Don Miller, and others. If you're looking for a deeper spiritual experience, you will devour this book.
Customer Reviews:
Another inspiring, lovely book from this talented writer.......2007-03-25
It's not the average Wisconsinite that would choose to spend forty days in the hottest of deserts, but William J. Elliott is not average. If you are lucky, you have discovered this writer's previous works in which he travels worldwide to interview the great spiritual leaders of our time. In both of his must reads, Tying Rocks to Clouds and A Place at the Table : A Journey to Redicover the Real Jesus with Guidance of Various Teachers, from Billy Graham to Deepak Chopra, Elliott wanders far from his native Madison, WI to seek the wise words a far flung array of folks from Mother Teresa to Neil Douglas-Klotz. In this narrative, however, Elliott goes on his own inner journey to experience the Judean desert as Jesus did. Elliott writes, "...my going to the desert was the next step in my relationship with God. And this relationship demanded a consummation; a confrontation of both love and anger..."
My guess is that during most of his heat tortured days in the Judean desert, Elliott would have gladly traded his saunalike tent and gecko-infested cave, for the relative comforts of his motor home which gave him shelter and wheels on his previous journeys. But in Falling into the Face of God, Elliott has no choice but to share his days and nights with flies, ants, bees, lizards and other unsavory types with only a mosquito net between them. What gets him through all this? Mediation, getting up at 4:30 a.m. to cook when it's only 100 degrees and Clif Bars to name only a few things.
One of the many things I adore about Elliott's writing is his wide range of references. Whether he's quoting the Gospel of Thomas, likening an event to Bill Murray's Groundhog Day or conjuring up Louis Armstrong singing "What a Wonderful World", you know Elliott is once again turning the ordinary occurrence -- not even observable to most of us -- into an extraordinary, exquisite moment. I also appreciate his ironic sense of humor and perspective despite the fact that he is pushed mentally and physically to his humanly limits. Elliott crawls to the edge of a 250 foot cliff for fear that he'll trip and fall. While unbelievably rappelling down the same cliff when rock climbing enthusiasts passing by adopt him, Elliott compares the desire to quickly end the experience to speaking with his girlfriend about some emotional issue.
Elliot's writing reminds me of the spiritual quest of Anne Lamott or C.S. Lewis with a dose of Nick Hornsby's humor and spot on observations. Hard to believe? Try reading one of Elliott's books. If nothing else, if you make the right decision to read and hopefully purchase this book, you'll learn about the rules of the desert including "....from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., do not move!" From this WI native to another, thanks, for taking us on another incredible journey. Can't wait for the next trip!
Product Description
This very personal and readable collection of essays examines those moments in the author's life since Sept. 11, 2001, which have led to her questioning her own meaningfulness. Sometimes humorous, sometimes poignant, but always accessible and touching, these essays don't just lecture; they search. These truly are glimpses of one woman's attempt to make sense of the world "one essay at a time."
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Things are NOT Falling Apart, They are Falling Into Place!: Rising Above Your Childhood
Phillip D. Wiginton
Manufacturer: 1st Books Library
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ASIN: 141406814X |
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- Grindhouse: The Sleaze-filled Saga of an Exploitation Double Feature
- Hackmaster: Little Keep on the Borderlands
- Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America
- Harvesting Hope: The Story of Cesar Chavez
- Harvesting Hope: The Story of Cesar Chavez
- Harvesting Hope: The Story of Cesar Chavez
- His Brother's Keeper: A Story from the Edge of Medicine
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
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