Word: childress
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1990
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
TENDER by Mark Childress...
...least all those folks called him by his name. For Mark Childress, Elvis is Leroy Kirby. The name is a down-home rendering of the French for Presley's nickname, "the King," but that's about the extent of the trouble taken to adjust the facts for fictional purposes. Tender is meant to be a biographical novel, but it reads more like an overextended vamp on a folk hero...
...well dad, a hardscrabble life in Tupelo, Miss., and a heart full of . . . well, fury. Leroy's mad about being poor, mad about his daddy, mad about the kids who laugh at him. He sets out to sing out and show the world. You know the rest. Childress does bring a little something new to the party, though. He has a good ear and a sympathetic eye for poor white life, Southern variety, and a sense of humor about Leroy's raffish relatives. The Kirbys are sort of Saturday-evening Snopeses, and if Tender can't penetrate the magic...
...Iron by J.M. Coetzee -- South Africa, with cancer as a metaphor for apartheid. Rabbit at Rest by John Updike -- Harry Angstrom hops offstage, perhaps to meet his maker. The Further Inquiry by Ken Kesey -- The head Prankster rerolls the legendary cross-country bus trip. Tender by Mark Childress -- For the character Leroy Kirby, read Elvis Presley. Orrie's Story by Thomas Berger -- The author of Little Big Man retells the Greek Oresteia as a small-town tragedy...
Barring a few uneven moments, Trouble in Mind does a remarkable job of bringing alive the racial tensions of the 1950's, even in the limited context of Childress' Broadway scenario. The play strikes a delicate balance between laughter and despair, and that perhaps, is its greatest strength. It is not straight drama, nor straight comedy, but as Sheldon would put it, "a slice of life...