This Thing Called Life

September 1, 2020
A journalist acquaintance of Prince's riffs on the musician's Sphinx-like persona, heartbreaks, and basketball skills. In this peculiar, intermittently intriguing blend of biography and memoir, Karlen makes clear that he didn't know Prince (1958-2016) especially well. But, as he suggests, who did? They hung out in the same Minneapolis neighborhood as children, which helped Karlen gain Prince's trust for three Rolling Stone features. Later, Karlen was recruited to script a movie, 3 Chains o' Gold, that stitched together some of Prince's early-1990s videos. More provocatively, the author notes that he wrote a document to accompany Prince's as-yet-undiscovered will, which he claims is inexplicably buried somewhere at Paisley Park, Prince's compound outside Minneapolis. Over the years, they'd intermittently meet and connect via letters and late-night phone calls, but that's not much to build a book around--especially since Karlen shares no details about the alleged will's contents. Still, the author did a little reporting to supplement his files, connecting with Prince's high school music teacher and Purple Rain-era band mates like Andr� Cymone. Karlen also chronicles Prince's deep-seated resentment of his high school basketball coach, who refused to play the infamously short budding musician despite his outstanding athletic talent. Prince could be peculiar and protective about his family history, concealing his father's abuse and the death of his infant son from a genetic disorder while allowing slanderous rumors about his mother to perpetuate. That along with his numerous other idiosyncrasies, Karlen argues, were part of Prince's "kayfabe," a professional wrestling term for selling the sport's fakeness as real. The author is a lyrical writer on these points, but ultimately, the narrative is an exercise in armchair psychology that has too many historical gaps to qualify as biography, and the author is too distant from his subject to deliver an intimate portrait. An earnest vamp on Prince's life that leaves its subject no less mysterious.

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August 28, 2020

Karlen's grandparents lived in the same Minneapolis neighborhood as a young Prince Rogers Nelson, leading to a chance meeting between the two boys outside a Dairy Queen. Years later, that encounter led Prince to pick Karlen to profile him for several Rolling Stone cover stories. For decades, Prince continued to confide in Karlen over late-night phone calls as the superstar retreated further into his Paisley Park fortress. The result of those confidences is a meandering biography and an account of what it was like to be Prince's almost friend. Karlen admits that Prince's mercurial personality and penchant for myth-making made him unknowable. Unfortunately, he does little to reveal much else about the provocative musician, filling this void with obscure references and cringe-worthy language, such as "Instead, let me tell you about where I felt aspects of his spirit." VERDICT Karlen's writing is too often barely coherent. Even devoted fans should skip.--Amanda Westfall, Emmet O'Neal P.L., Mountain Brook, AL

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