Artistically and psychologically acute biography of the great American poet-playwright. Tennessee Williams (191183) named theatrical producer Leverich his authorized biographer in 1979, but a hostile executor of the estate blocked his work's publication until her death in 1994. First in a projected two volumes, this thoughtful assessment seems only to have benefited from the enforced wait: The novice author has ably organized well-known facts about Thomas Lanier Williams III's early years and provided a refreshingly in-depth perspective on the apprenticeship that ended in 1945 with the triumphant New York premiere of The Glass Menagerie, the first mature work of self-christened playwright Tennessee Williams. A complex, three-dimensional portrait emerges, far superior to previous shallow efforts by Donald Spoto and Ronald Hayman. Leverich identifies the principal conflict of Williams's life as the battle between his puritan and pagan instincts, a split reflected in his plays' central theme of the sensitive, artistic soul battered by a materialistic world and in his lifelong fear that he would go insane, like his beloved sister, Rose. Leverich places the writer's homosexuality in context, acknowledging it as a fundamental aspect of his personality but avoiding other biographers' tendency to make it the sole wellspring of his art, which Leverich convincingly argues owed at least as much to such literary influences as D.H. Lawrence, Anton Chekhov, and Hart Crane. The book has some faults: Its clearly defined main themes are repetitiously reiterated, and some judgments seem simplistic, such as the idea that ``Tom'' and ``Tennessee'' were always at odds and the contention that the writer never recovered from his inability to win his disapproving father's love. Leverich's serviceable prose could use a little of Williams's lyrical eloquence, but he nearly equals his subject in compassion and understanding of the tangled human heart. Affectionate and affecting, dense with arresting detail, likely to be definitive. (50 b&w photos, not seen) (First printing of 50,000; first serial to the New Yorker)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-517-70225-8
Page Count: 672
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1995
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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