This trashy, scandal-mongering history of lesbian and bisexual women in Hollywood remains readable in spite of itself. Fran Lebowitz once said that ``if you remove all gay influences from Hollywood, all you've left is Let's Make a Deal.'' In his perfervid attempt to detail this influence, Madsen (Stanwyck, 1994, etc.) names names and dishes dirt with an almost gleeful Çlan. All the usual suspects are featured, including Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Barbara Stanwyck, and the remarkable Mercedes de Acosta, who seems to have slept with everyone. Thanks to Madsen's diligent research, more than a dozen celebrities are also publicly outed here for the first time. When he can't quite muster the factsand the celebrity in question is still alive and possibly litigiousthe author resorts several times to unpleasant nudge-and-wink innuendo. He also fails to make connections between a celebrity's sexuality and its inflection in her acting and choice of roles. Nor does he take full account of the homophobic text and subtext that runs through so many Hollywood films. Others, such as Vito Russo in The Celluloid Closet, have trod far more ably here. And for a history, this book is remarkably erratic, spending chapters on some actors and sentences on others and jumping from the talkies to Garbo to the silents with wild abandon. What is interesting in this account is how little has really changed. Production codes that allowed studios to fire an actor for ``moral causes'' may have disappeared, but it is still generally considered career poison for an actor to come out of the closet. In the end this book is little more than a who-slept-with-whom compendium; further proof of how ultimately unrevealing sexuality tends to be and, at least in Madsen's hands, how trite. (24 pages photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1995
ISBN: 1-55972-275-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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