A big, eminently readable story, deftly spun even if with few surprises.
A tale of boom and bust—but mostly bust—in the always-beckoning oil fields of Texas.
In this epic, comparatively modest in size but ambitious in scope, Lone Star State native and itinerant correspondent Mealer (Muck City: Winning and Losing in Football’s Forgotten Town, 2012, etc.) traces his family’s checkered history across generations, planting cotton, fighting wars, grieving for the fallen, and always looking for better things. “Only in Texas was there enough space for so many second acts,” he writes. Any reader of Larry McMurtry’s Thalia cycle of novels will know just what Mealer means, and in the largest sense, his story is pretty familiar ground: People get desperate in the absence of money and careless in the presence of it. The author takes his time setting a textured backdrop for his story: Oil came late to Texas, but when it arrived, it did so with more than a vengeance. Edna Ferber might have modeled Giant on some of Mealer’s characters, including a would-be baron whose sexual escapades got him thrown out of a country club, to which he replied, “I’ll build my own place.” The story eventually settles on Mealer’s father, who worked endlessly to make his own luck but almost always hit a bad streak when in the company of his best friend, a dashing, likable, yet unreliable fellow who was always on the make, selling one lease with one hand to buy another with the other, hiring staff without quite knowing what they could do, and buying planes and houses with money that wasn’t quite his. It was the Texas boom-and-bust tale all over again, punctuated with fistfuls of speed and long lines of cocaine; as Mealer writes, sagely, “it was hard to stay focused on Jesus when you were busy drilling for oil.” True enough: One minute Reagan is newly in office and you’re flush, the next he’s in trouble and you’re broke, and maybe you’ll see the ghost of Bob Wills on the way to the poorhouse—or the bank.
A big, eminently readable story, deftly spun even if with few surprises.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-05891-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 10, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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