Customer Reviews

A Boy Named Shel: The Life and Times of Shel Silverstein

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

"A Boy Named Shel" is really a mixed bag. On one hand, it is an incredibly interesting read, due entirely to its subject matter - Shel Silverstein was a fascinating individual who lived life to the fullest, and his passion for creation and zest for the here-and-now clearly comes through in the telling of his life.

On the other hand, Rogak is a horrible author and biographer. The biography itself is comprised largely of quotes by people who knew him, and in that respect I believe Rogak should only really claim editorial (as opposed to authorial) rights. Her actual writing is poorly organized and even more poorly executed, and would greatly detract from a less luminous subject than Silverstein. It is unfortunate that such a creative and successful person fell prey to such a biographer.

As soon as I saw the biography of one of my favorite artists on the shelf, I knew I had to take it home with me. Four days after I had the pleasure of starting this book I am relieved to be through with it.

Lisa Rogak's biography is well-researched, that no one can deny. Unfortunately this fact is made very obvious by her constant reliance on quoting her interviews making the book seem more like an magazine article then a full-length biography. Further to the point, after reading less than halfway through the book I began to feel like Ms. Rogak was regurgitating the same descriptive lines (even going as far as using the same syntax) to describe reasoning for different events. Surely, certain personal characteristics stay similar throughout a person's life, but to use the same syntax and employ the same tropes (to give one example: "...nothing in his life could have prepared Shel for the tragedy that would follow..." at least three times, in those very words) is plain lazy on the part of a writer.

Shel Silverstein lived an exciting life, was clearly a complex character, and a beautiful artist. It's too bad my initial thrill at the discovery of this biography quickly dissipated when I realized that its author was simply not up to the task of writing a book to match the complexity of its subject. A good biographer is supposed to make a life seem like an exciting plot, constantly opening up new approaches to its' subject; in this the author failed. Lisa Rogak's "A Boy Named Shel" was more like a chronology interspersed by interview excerpts than a self-containing biography. The only reason I waded through the bad writing was my overwhelming interest in Shel Silverstein and the book's paltry length.

I know there are a couple of other biographies of Shel Silverstein in existence, my hope is that they are better than this one.

Not recommended.

I tend to agree with the other reviewers here. This book is only half of what it could be. The writing is bad, clumsy and cliche ridden.

However, I read it through in one sitting, found it interesting and bemoaned that it was the only biography of the man so far. It is not overly detailed, but more like surface tension.

With a subject like Shel Silverstein, you could have a book three times as long, with many pictures and photos.

I echo the sentiment that this is not a great book. While Shel Silverstein was a remarkable and influential figure (certainly he was in my life), Mrs. Rogak's language and presentation makes for a seemingly unauthorized biography. Why there is one early cartoon featured in the whole book and not one poem I find unforgiveable. A cartoonist and poet and song writer and not a significant representation of such work in a bio? Perhaps the estate didn't authorize, though Rogak seems to have access to many of his friends and has done research to quote previous interviews. Silverstein was a special bird, full of contradictions and ever creative until the end but this book, which covers chronologically his life, doesn't dig into anything of significance.

Shel Silverstein was a fascinating dude--he wrote songs, plays, short stories, cartoons, and of course, children's books. He stayed out until 6:00 AM, but rarely drank and didn't do drugs. He didn't like kids, but made truckloads of money writing children's books. He was not a particularly attractive fellow, but slept with lots, and lots, and lots of women.

I learned some interesting stuff reading this book, but it doesn't really do him justice. There's a lot left unsaid in this book. For instance, I never got a sense for how he actually met all of these famous people--how did he get in with Bobby Bare, and the like? Somewhere around page 180, the author says how important his mother was to him, but that's the first mention of his mother that I remember. This is a frustrating book. I want more. And I want it to be better written.

I have no idea why I missed this book for so long;but now that I've found it',my interest in Silverstein has been rekindled again.The reviews for this book are all over the map;but why shouldn't they be? How could any one person write one book that could possibly do justice to such a complicated and talented person.
Silverstein was one of the greatest observers of life in the 20th century and attempting to capture all of him in one book fits one of my favorite cartoons of Shel's. That is why I chose the caption of his cartoon showing two prisoners shackled in chains to the wall of a dungeon,as my title for this review.Who knows what Shel had in mind when he created that cartoon? Maybe he was telling us all what a variety of life there was out there;and how he, as well as the rest of us, need a plan to grasp it all.Silverstein ,even with his prodigious talent and imagination,tried to deal with life, and while he was immensely successful at everything he tried,he probably felt he never really was able to do it justice.But that is really what this amazing life we are given is all about.Search as we may,we will never really satisfy all our wonderment and curiousities;but that fact should never stop us from trying.
This book brought back many memories to me from over the many years that I benefited from the his works .I find that many of my favourite personalities and things were often interconnected without realizing it at the time.
With the changes that have taken place on Radio and TV ,the world of entertainment has changed,but this book brought it all back to me.As I turned from one page to the next,I was amazed how interconnected so many of my favorites were.
Between 1969 and 1974,I worked in New York and lived in New Jersey.I used to listen to Jean Shepherd on WOR almost every night between 10 and midnight.I even went to one of his performances at Rutgers University.I can still remember many of his "talk shows" such as growing up in Indiana and his youthful days,how his dad loved the Cubs,how lightning hit his ham radio,his magnificent hot ait baloon that crashed on the roof and set the school on fire,his vacations in his old man's car and the cabin full of snakes.I never imagined what a close friend he had been of Shel's since his youth. Bobby Bare has been one of my favorite Country singers since the 60's.I can still remember the night I first heard him singing "Rosalie's Good Eats Cafe" on my car radio.I thought it was never going to end ,and hoped it wouldn't.(Kinda like "Alice's Restaurant" by Arlo Guthrie).I had no idea at the time that it had been written by Shel.After reading this book ,I pulled out my stack of Bare's albums,250 or so,and was amazed ,but not surprised how many songs were written by Shel,and what a close relationship they had,right up to the time of Shel's untimely death.I could go on and on about my other favorite people and their relationships with Shel such as Cash,Kristofferson,Hefner,Carlin,Cosbey,Crumb,Davis,Dr.Hook,Dylan,Gibson,Loretta lynn,Irish Rovers and "The Unicorn",Yarrow,and on and on.
It was interesting to see how much wealth he had amassed by the time of his death,and what huge roalities would come to his estate in the years ahead;and how little that wealth interested or even influenced him during his life.
This biography shows what a different lifestyle he lived,how his huge talent covered so many different venues. Kid's Books,Cartoons,Travelogues,Songwriting,collecting,Plays ;you name it ,he excelled at everything he took an interest in.
I mentioned before how the media has changed so much over the last decades.But all is not lost.I have spent several hours since reading this book,"surfing the net"and there is an awful lot to find and enjoy about Shel Silverstei himself and his works;but that is only the beginning ,it leads you to just as much about his friends and other favorites of mine such as Shepherd,Bare,and others.When you get finished there,go to "You Tube" and there's a "ton" of stuff there.
I realize from the other reviews ,that this book is looked at differently by people;but I found it a great rekindling of the many hours of enjoyment Silverstein and many of his friends and associates have given me over the years.
Thanks to the author for trying to put it all into perspective.This was a particularly difficult task when you realize how Silverstein disliked interviews of any kind, and even went out of his way to shun publicity.

Based on conjecture and hearsay and horribly written.
A total waste of anyone's time who is hoping for an accurate and interesting account of this great (and very private) storyteller's life.
(I gave it 1 star because I couldn't give it less.)

It was warm and tasty. To attempt to unravel Shel would be a fools challenge. Lisa is only half a fool but I enjoyed that half quite a bit.

This book was a great buy. I have always heard that Shel was a very private person, but this book had great detail about his life. Easy read and interesting.

What's it like to be born with more artistic interests than ten ordinary artists combined? Lisa Rogak's book about Shel Silverstein provides one answer to that question, and the answer is this: It's different.

Shel Silverstein was an accomplished cartoonist, a poet, a talented jazz musician, a writer of movie scores and rock-and-roll and country western hit songs, an author of best-selling children's books, and a noteworthy playwright.

If an editor asked Silverstein to change a word in one of his poems, Silverstein couldn't directly comply, even if he wanted to. The closest he could come to it was to tear up the poem and re-write it from scratch without the offending word. Yet Silverstein's loyalty to his own creative vision never got in the way of collaborating with other artists. Indeed, he sought opportunities to collaborate with others, he produced great work on a collaborative basis, and he was generous in sharing credit with his collaborators.

Although Silverstein seldom explained his work except to say that it explained itself, Rogak has done an effective job of characterizing both the work and the worker behind it and placing them in perspective with the help of stories and anecdotes collected from dozens of Silverstein's friends, associates, and artistic collaborators.