Autobiography

Gertrude Stein(1874-1946)Stein, who studied medicine at Johns Hopkins, had such influential opinions on art and literature that she had the power to build or ruin reputations. She was one of the first admirers of Cubists and other experimenters like Pablo Picasso, who painted her portrait."Three Lives," Stein's first published book, has been hailed as a minor masterpiece. Later, Stein wrote about American soldiers in France with "Brewsie and Willie."Stein also wrote an autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, which is in actuality her own autobiography.

"The Autobiography of Joseph Stalin," by Richard Lourie. Counterpoint. 320 pages. $25.The image of Stalin, one of the great mass murderers of the 20th century, reaches us a little blurred by World War II. Hitler's grotesque personality and the colossal evil he inspired has long been dissected and displayed. The man born as Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili remains a murkier figure. Lurking in the collective American memory of the Soviet tyrant is the stern yet good-hearted Uncle Joe, our steadfast ally against the German fascists.

David Benjamin Wilkens, whose battle against multiple sclerosis inspired an award in his name at the school where he was a mathematics and computer instructor, died Tuesday at his Catonsville home. He was 36.Mr. Wilkens taught for the past seven years at Mount de Sales Academy in Catonsville and was faculty adviser for the high school's newspaper, the Anchor.The school established the David B. Wilkens Courage Award in 1995. It is given annually to a student in recognition of courage under trial and hardship.

1963: Touch-tone phones1964: High-speed train in Japan1965: Malcolm X's "Autobiography"1965: Chavez boycotts grapes

Clara V. White, 93, an avid bingo playerClara V. White, who at 92 played bingo seven nights a week, died of respiratory distress syndrome Saturday at North Arundel Hospital. She was 93 and lived on Whistler Avenue in Southwest Baltimore.Born in West Baltimore, the former Clara Virginia Harmis went to work at Calvert Distilleries about age 15. About the same time, she met the man who would become her husband, Leonard White.A family member said they met in Barry's Dance Hall on Baltimore Street, a common place for young couples to go in post-World War I Baltimore.

AFTER RUMMAGING through five bookcases with about 15 shelves, I still can't find it. Where is it? Where is my autobiography of Wilt Chamberlain?Murphy's law -- the one that says anything that can go wrong will -- and all its corollaries and contrapositives are in effect here. I've found "Bill Walton" by author Jack Scott, stumbled on "Giant Steps" by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar with Peter Knobler. I heaved a sigh of relief when I saw "Second Wind" by Bill Russell with Baltimore's own Taylor Branch buried in the third row of one shelf.

Richard Wright(1908-1960)Wright titled his autobiography "Black Boy." It describes Wright's poor and rough upbringing in Mississippi and Tennessee. It is often considered a fictionialized autobiography because of its novelistic techniques.Wright was one of the first African-Americans to protest the treatment of blacks, notably in his novel "Native Son." The protagonist in the book is Bigger Thomas, a young black man whose accidental killing of a white girl makes clear to him the antagonism blacks receive from mainstream society.

The Los Angeles Times said in an editorial Friday: FICTION is fiction, there is no way around it, and we now discover that Rigoberta Menchu, the winner of the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize, concocted many of the events in the autobiography that brought her fame and adulation. But that does not lessen our need to learn what happened in the bloody highlands of Guatemala during the Central American wars of the 1980s.What was just a rumor upon the 1983 publication of "I Rigoberta Menchu" has been documented in a book by American anthropologist David Stoll.

THE MIRACLE OF Sam Lacy isn't his age, which is 95, or his sports column in the Afro-American newspaper, which has been running since the Roosevelt years, or the delight Lacy takes in showing up for work in the pre-dawn darkness, writing his piece, and then heading out to the links for nine holes of golf.It's his new autobiography, "Fighting for Fairness," and the remarkable tone that reflects Lacy exactly: He gives us the facts, and his own cool logic, and leaves aside what must have been his own fears, and anger, and awful loneliness.

"I'm not sure I could properly identify the 'greatest' book I've ever read. I can only tell you that the 'Autobiography of Malcolm X' was the book that had the greatest impact on my life. To a young black man growing up on Chicago's South Side, the book was a revelation, prompting me to look at myself and my world as I've never done before."- Bryant GumbelHost of CBS' "Public Eye";former host, NBC's "Today Show"From "Books That Shaped Successful People," by Kevin H. Kelly (Fairview Press, 1995)

The Jedi master of fishing, Lefty Kreh, is the subject of two new books. Most of us would kill for one volume, and here's Lefty with two keepers. One he has put together himself, something he has been threatening to do for some time but never found the time. The other is a tribute from some of fishing's big names. Kreh, who held the job I now have until his "retirement" in January 1992, has written an entire library full of fishing books and magazine articles. But for his autobiography, My Life Was This Big, he has teamed up with Chris Millard, a former editor at Golf World magazine.

What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng: A Novel Dave Eggers McSweeney's / 478 pages / $26 As the best-known writer of his generation, Dave Eggers has attracted more than his share of criticism. He has been accused of pretension, self-indulgence, false modesty and flagrant postmodernism (whatever that might be). Most of these bombs have been lobbed by folks who are envious of Eggers - his youth, his talent, his outsize ambition. Very few of his critics, at any rate, have bothered to identify Eggers for what he is: an unabashed humanist.

Can't we all just get along? It isn't even football season yet and Terrell Owens and Donovan McNabb are at it again. Frankly, I expected Donovan to take the high road after T.O. re-ignited their running feud with his new tell-all book, T.O., but McNabb always seems to take the bait. He labeled Owens' autobiography a "children's book" and disputed many of the revelations included in it during a media session Friday, as if there is anyone out there who needs to be reminded that T.O. is a major loon who would say just about anything to get on SportsCenter.

Elia Kazan: A Biography Richard Schickel HarperCollins / 510 pages From his formative years, Elia Kazan's role models among directors included Stanislavsky, Dovzhenko and the maestros of European expressionism. As a quintessentially American genius of stage and screen, passionately believing in "roots," Kazan unveiled Marlon Brando and James Dean for audiences far beyond America's shores. During his heyday (1930-1960), Kazan virtually re-explored the terrain of John Dos Passos' trilogy, U.S.A.

BOY, AM I mad at "Fiddy." "Fiddy," for those of you not familiar with the world of rap, is a nickname for rapper 50 Cent, who was born Curtis James Jackson III on July 6, 1975, in the Queens borough of New York City. That information comes from page 7 of From Pieces to Weight: Once Upon a Time in Southside Queens, Fiddy's autobiography. Cornell Dews, a teacher at Furman Templeton Elementary School who keeps me abreast of what's happening in the world of rap and hip-hop, told me a couple of weeks ago that Fiddy's autobiography had hit bookstores.

A Democrat triumphed -- at least on the best-seller list. Bill Clinton wrote the big book -- his fulsome autobiography -- of 2004. Bob Dylan weighed in on his own enigmatic existence and porn star Jenna Jameson bared herself -- in words, not just photos. Philip Roth imaged a nightmare America that cozied up to Adolf Hitler, and the 9/11 Commission's report on a real nightmare in America became an acclaimed best-seller. Tom Wolfe published a new novel, and critics thought it was a nightmare.

A Democrat triumphed -- at least on the best-seller list. Bill Clinton wrote the big book -- his fulsome autobiography -- of 2004. Bob Dylan weighed in on his own enigmatic existence and porn star Jenna Jameson bared herself -- in words, not just photos. Philip Roth imaged a nightmare America that cozied up to Adolf Hitler, and the 9/11 Commission's report on a real nightmare in America became an acclaimed best-seller. Tom Wolfe published a new novel, and critics thought it was a nightmare.

Somebody goofed and, after the lip-synching went south, Ashlee Simpson wasn't about to take the blame. At first, anyway. She faulted the band. Geffen Records, her label, pointed to a computer glitch. Her dad blamed a scratchy throat. Finally, Simpson admitted that the chance to perform before a national audience -- and really nail it -- was too precious to leave to chance. In the end, though, the blame likely falls as much to the pressure to be perfect, to match the complex choreography of a video while performing live on stage.

NEW YORK - The scene inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art last night would surely have been included in Bill Clinton's exhaustive autobiography were the book not already printed and on sale starting at 12:01 a.m. today. Here he could have described a former president basking in his new incarnation as author, reveling inside a media-celebrity scrum where wonks and luminaries mingled openly and the talk swirled around his life and legacy. "I hope my publisher gets his money back," a jovial Clinton joked to the more than 1,260 people gathered under the vaulted ceiling in the museum's Great Hall.

My Nine Lives: Chapters of a Possible Past, by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Shoemaker & Hoard. 288 pages. $25. Mary McCarthy, who got a lot of attention in her day for spiking her fiction with autobiography (in books like The Group) and her autobiography with fiction (especially in the great Memories of a Catholic Girlhood), once said that as a writer she was taking real plums and baking them in an imaginary cake. In a new book that she declines to classify as memoir or fiction, the august novelist and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala takes a page from McCarthy's playbook.