Fighting for human rights, writing the perfect poem, discovering cures for mortal diseases: these are endeavors Trillin...
The chowhound pursues soul-stirring, pulse-elevating food from one eatery to another, over many a mile.
When the times were hard, “there was nothing to do but keep eating,” writes Trillin (Tepper Isn’t Going Out, 2002, etc.) in a collection that relates to foodstuffs the way others might refer to passages from holy books. Let us give thanks to the saving graces of Chinese restaurants, from Ecuador to Nauru, Paris to Prague; to that gnarly pumpernickel bagel that might lure the writer’s daughter back to his hometown New York; to all those bistros and neighborhood markets that fill him up in ways the more famous destinations never do, those temples where he “can’t seem to help wondering, when [his] mind wanders between forkfuls, whether God really intended all that to be done to food.” Likewise, Trillin is willing to pay the dues of the pilgrim on a quest, journeying far and enduring the foul in search of the sublime—like a string of boudin, for example, proving the Cajun dictum “the best boudin is always the boudin closest to where you live” (as long as you live in Louisiana). Better yet, there’s the Cajun wisdom that says you ought to eat your purchase in the parking lot of the place you bought it in, minutes after buying. Trillin is ready to sample 20 bowls of ceviche, knowing he “would wake up the next morning feeling a bit fragile.” His Register of Frustration and Deprivation, foods he is denied because he isn’t geographically positioned to get them, is as plentiful as his turn-downs are rare: “Would it be fair to say that you’re wimping out on the guinea pig?” his daughter asks on a visit to a restaurant in Peru.
Fighting for human rights, writing the perfect poem, discovering cures for mortal diseases: these are endeavors Trillin would consider deserving of our admiration, thank you. And you can add to that “the ability to read the wall signs in Chinese restaurants.”Pub Date: May 13, 2003
ISBN: 0-375-50808-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2003
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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