Review by Booklist Review
Renowned poet Hirsch recounts his rough-and-tumble Chicago and Skokie childhood in ingeniously distilled comedic bits. Some are as concise as a sentence; others set a scene and include dialogue, usually in the form of insults or threats. Pithy, lacerating, bittersweet, and hilarious, these quick takes often focus on Irma, Hirsch's determined mother, and his gambler birth father, called Ruby, who left the family when Hirsch and his sister Lenie were very young. Irma eventually remarried, and Kurt became their steadfast father, while their obstreperous family circle included a bunch of Irma's friends she insisted they embrace as aunts and uncles: "The women were loud, the men shady." "No one had a job--everyone had a hustle." Hirsch sets his extended family's combative temperaments, sharp-witted battles, and scrappy struggles within the history of 1950s and '60s Jewish life in Chicago and its suburb Skokie. Here too is the future poet's coming-of-age as a multitalented high-school athlete, which secured his crucial college scholarship, while he was also drawn to literature: "Reading poetry, I felt poetry reading me." Wisecracks, mischief, trouble, arguments, cruelties, absurdities, and deceit are all delivered with a stand-up comic's precision and a poet's gift for exhilarating and droll wordplay. This card-slapping, dice-rolling, nimbly riffing, heart-wrenching remembrance is glorious in its pain and love, humor and wonder.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this eccentric memoir, poet and MacArthur fellow Hirsch (Stranger by Night) shares memories of his Illinois upbringing in fragmentary bursts. The first entry, "All Sales Are Final," is a quote from Hirsch's grandfather: "God is like my old boss on Maxwell Street. You may get home and discover that your new shirt doesn't have a back, but you're still not going to get a refund." It's followed by brief entries about all four of Hirsch's grandparents, then discursive anecdotes about his parents' childhoods. Readers should know by this point whether they're willing to go along for the ride: the rest of the book moves along similar lines, juxtaposing witticisms ("A watched kettle never boils. An unwatched kettle blows its top") with more concrete bits of narrative--about Hirsch's mother falling out with her friends, his father serving in the Army in Guam, and his days playing football, basketball, and baseball--that form a mosaic of the author's coming-of-age among a large Jewish family in the 1950s and '60s. Those who prize linearity and concrete detail might be left wanting, but poetry fans and more adventurous readers will be rewarded by this evocative family portrait. Photos. Agent: Liz Darhansoff, Darhansoff & Verrill Literary. (June)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
This amazingly original work by award-winning poet Hirsch (The Heart of American Poetry) is something so delightful and new, it feels magical. It's an aphoristic autobiography that reads like a stand-up routine but feels like a series of Kafkaesque punchlines in pursuit of a perfect pierogi. There is something dizzying and delightful about his presentation here--a book-length series of brief prose vignettes (usually running anywhere between two to 10 lines) that relate Hirsch's childhood and family history in Skokie, IL. Told with such exuberance, precision, and wit, each vignette feels almost like a perfect poem or piece of eternity. The book is so charming and compulsively readable that readers will find it hard to put down. VERDICT A clever, heartfelt, and nostalgic look at Hirsch's childhood, from his pre-history to the day he moved out of his parents' home.--Herman Sutter
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An eminent cultural figure finds a funny way to tell his life story. Hirsch, a poet, a bestselling author, and the president of the Guggenheim Foundation for more than two decades, channels the voices and personalities of his Chicagoland Jewish childhood to create a memoir composed of jokes and short vignettes, one setup-and-punchline after another--probably surprising himself as much as the reader when the gimmick holds up for nearly 300 pages, until the author leaves home for college at Grinnell, where an angry high school French teacher lobbied madly to prevent his admission because of a profane question he posed about Santa Claus at a senior assembly. Though he's toned it down a bit since the days of using the f-word in high school, in essence he's still that guy: sometimes silly, sometimes off-color, often Yiddish-flavored, with a penchant for puns and dad jokes that never quits. Here is an entry titled "Brain Sale": "'If we sold everyone's brains,' my grandmother said to me, 'I'd charge the most for yours.' 'Why, because I'm the smartest one in the family?' 'No, because yours have never been used.'" Another entry is "Celebratory Dinner": "Whenever I got laryngitis, my mom served steak to celebrate the fact that I couldn't talk. That was tough to swallow." A wonderful section recounting the fate of a series of aquatic pets is titled "The Goldfish Variations." All the jokes don't stop him from filling in along the way the details of his quirky mother, his two fathers, his siblings and his extended Jewish family, his sports achievements and romantic conquests, and the Jewish migration to the suburbs. Particularly telling is one of the final sections, "How To Remember Childhood": "This book is dedicated to my sister Lenie. We lived through everything together. We share a sense of humor and a history. She has vetted my stories, but she also remembers our childhood as traumatic. I prefer to recall it otherwise. Her way was more expensive. It required psychoanalysis." A unique re-creation of a great life in a largely vanished world. Bada bing, bada boom! Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
