Terrence Crimmins
Auteur van Who was Joseph Pulitzer?: A novel
Werken van Terrence Crimmins
Tagged
Algemene kennis
- Korte biografie
- Terrence Crimmins was the youngest of nine in an Irish Catholic family in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he rooted for the Pirates and the Steelers. He continued his Catholic education at Boston College, where he also learned to drink beer and play rugby, and received Bachelors and Masters degrees. Crimmins has done newspaper work, online columns, published in a scholarly journal, optioned a screenplay for a biographical picture, and taught history in Baltimore, Maryland, for a number of years. He is now relaxing back in Pittsburgh, and writing short stories and an novels about the comedy and the drama of the American experience.
Leden
Besprekingen
1 
juliecracchiolo | 2 andere besprekingen | Mar 12, 2018 |
juliecracchiolo | 2 andere besprekingen | Mar 12, 2018 | 
A prize honoring excellence in journalism and the arts is named after Joseph Pulitzer. This novel is a fictionalized tale of his life. While it read like a genuine biography, there are no citations provide to prove provenance for the events and conversation included. However, Kalanithi does provide an interesting overview of Pulitzer’s life that makes it a good introduction to the man.
Who Was Joseph Pulitzer? A Novel by Terrence Crimmins (read 4 Oct 2016) This is a book published by Knollwood Press of Boston. It is historical fiction and tells the story of Joseph Pulitzer, who was born in Hungary in 1847 and came to the U.S. when he was 17--he jumped off the ship rather than have his bounty for enlisting in the Army be shared with others. He became owner of the St. Louis Post Dispatch and later the New York World. The novel tells of the life of Pulitzer but adds rather jejune dialog at times and changes some facts. I was struck that the book says President Cleveland dedicated the Statue of Liberty in April 1884. Well, I knew that was not right since Cleveland was not president in 1884. But Cleveland did dedicate the Statue, but on Oct 28, 1886--and he was president then! And Pulitzer died in 1911 and the book has him being told that Ambrose Bierce had gone to Mexico and disappeared there. Bierce did go to Mexico and disappear, but not till 1913, long after Pulitzer was dead and could not be told. So, the book has fiction in it but some of what it says is so. The author says he is indebted to W.A. Swanberg for Swanberg's biography of Pulitzer (which I read 6 April 1982--and it is very readable biography) and while this book is easy reading the biography of Swanberg should be the source relied on, rather than this novel, for facts as to Pulitzer's exciting life.… (meer)
I have been given a free copy of this book for an honest review. Sometimes we have to be careful of what we ask for (yep, I ended the sentence with a preposition).
This author has a wide ranging historical knowledge of Chile, Colombia, the drug trade, and many complex issues of the Middle East. The main plot, a double kidnapping that would support competing agenda, is interesting. The story content is interesting.
The writing style is not interesting and sometimes distracts so much that the interesting content fades into the background. There is extensive use of parenthesis. The information could have been equally well presented without parenthetical interruptions. Up to the time of reading this book, I have been a staunch defender of a writer’s prerogative to use the passive voice. This book has changed my opinion. There is such an extensive use of the passive voice that I started, but quickly abandoned, numbering the uses of the passive voice by using the note and highlighting feature in the Kindle application.
“Two pizzas' cardboard containers were shaking on the assent to the second floor” (pg. 3). This kind of misuse of vocabulary drives me crazy. That it occurs so early in the book redirects my attention from content to mechanics. This was a simple vocabulary mistake that an editor might have caught. Other things, below, might distract the editor in a way that allowed this mistake to get through the editing process.
“Just four hours earlier young Tom, Tom O'Malley was his name, had been sitting with his girlfriend inside the Georgetown University football stadium listening to the ambassador from Holland speak about the future opportunities for their generation, bringing a bittersweet end to the four easiest years in the lives of these young Americans” (p. 1-2). This sentence confused me in its construction. There were too many possible interpretations that could have been expressed in a simpler way (passive sentence alert).
“André Armoceeda had grown up in Lebanon and was not unaccustomed to chaos. He reveled in anarchy in fact, and a history of past successes” (p.3). I guess Andre was accustomed to chaos.
{“Hey, hey,” Tom rejoined in a melodious manner,} (p. 68). This looks like an overuse of a thesaurus.
“Someone lit up a joint of marijuana. Tom knew not who,” (p.92). Good grief, how pretentious!!
“Does this town have a nickname?” “I think they call it L A,” Tom responded. “L A?” (p.107)
A Georgetown graduate and the son of a diplomat discover and agree that LA is a nickname for Los Angeles. These two characters have led a sheltered life.
There is some great, creative, original content in the book. One example is the making of a video in LA where there is a food fight in which the main weapon is pizza slices. (p. 115)
Revealing the end of the book would be a spoiler. Although I will not do that, I will comment that the end of the book is predictable and overly “syrupy.”
Because of really good ideas, I think this book has great potential after editing for mechanics and further editing for stylistic consistency. In this review I gave a few examples of things I think “clang.” There are many more examples I could have presented.… (meer)
This author has a wide ranging historical knowledge of Chile, Colombia, the drug trade, and many complex issues of the Middle East. The main plot, a double kidnapping that would support competing agenda, is interesting. The story content is interesting.
The writing style is not interesting and sometimes distracts so much that the interesting content fades into the background. There is extensive use of parenthesis. The information could have been equally well presented without parenthetical interruptions. Up to the time of reading this book, I have been a staunch defender of a writer’s prerogative to use the passive voice. This book has changed my opinion. There is such an extensive use of the passive voice that I started, but quickly abandoned, numbering the uses of the passive voice by using the note and highlighting feature in the Kindle application.
“Two pizzas' cardboard containers were shaking on the assent to the second floor” (pg. 3). This kind of misuse of vocabulary drives me crazy. That it occurs so early in the book redirects my attention from content to mechanics. This was a simple vocabulary mistake that an editor might have caught. Other things, below, might distract the editor in a way that allowed this mistake to get through the editing process.
“Just four hours earlier young Tom, Tom O'Malley was his name, had been sitting with his girlfriend inside the Georgetown University football stadium listening to the ambassador from Holland speak about the future opportunities for their generation, bringing a bittersweet end to the four easiest years in the lives of these young Americans” (p. 1-2). This sentence confused me in its construction. There were too many possible interpretations that could have been expressed in a simpler way (passive sentence alert).
“André Armoceeda had grown up in Lebanon and was not unaccustomed to chaos. He reveled in anarchy in fact, and a history of past successes” (p.3). I guess Andre was accustomed to chaos.
{“Hey, hey,” Tom rejoined in a melodious manner,} (p. 68). This looks like an overuse of a thesaurus.
“Someone lit up a joint of marijuana. Tom knew not who,” (p.92). Good grief, how pretentious!!
“Does this town have a nickname?” “I think they call it L A,” Tom responded. “L A?” (p.107)
A Georgetown graduate and the son of a diplomat discover and agree that LA is a nickname for Los Angeles. These two characters have led a sheltered life.
There is some great, creative, original content in the book. One example is the making of a video in LA where there is a food fight in which the main weapon is pizza slices. (p. 115)
Revealing the end of the book would be a spoiler. Although I will not do that, I will comment that the end of the book is predictable and overly “syrupy.”
Because of really good ideas, I think this book has great potential after editing for mechanics and further editing for stylistic consistency. In this review I gave a few examples of things I think “clang.” There are many more examples I could have presented.… (meer)
Statistieken
- Werken
- 2
- Leden
- 17
- Populariteit
- #654,391
- Waardering
- 3.0
- Besprekingen
- 6
- ISBNs
- 3
Joseph Pulitzer has strong ties to St. Louis, where I reside. He came to St. Louis and became a cub reporter for the St. Louis Dispatch, later bought the defunct paper and merged it with the St. Louis Evening Post. He reamed the paper to the St. Louis Post and Dispatch. I’m not sure when it became the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, but after the Pulitzer merger, it became the most influential papers in St. Louis.
I am extremely disappointed in Crimmins’ tale. It’s as if he has never read historical fiction. It’s really just a bunch of facts strung together that makes for boring reading. The dialogue doesn’t fit the time period in which Crimmins’ is writing. Then there is the author intrusion. Crimmins’s pulls readers out of the story by making comments that have no room in the story. For these reasons Who Was Joseph Pulitzer? gets 1 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.… (meer)