A hodgepodge memoir in which the author experiences the full range of obsession.
A writer’s literary obsession leads him to discover that Victorian England might be a fine place to visit, but he couldn’t live there.
Clark (Dark Water: Flood and Redemption in the City of Masterpieces, 2008, etc.) turns inward with a hit-and-miss memoir of his “Victoromania.” The author has read more than 100 Victorian novels, many of which are now forgotten. He immersed himself in the art, architecture, philosophy, culture, and religious issues of the era. He traveled to England frequently, staying there once for as long as five months. Earlier, Clark experienced a painful divorce, though he reveals little about it or the marriage preceding it. He believed he could have better luck with online dating in England, and while he met a number of women who shared his interest in the Victorians, nothing came of those meetings. He apparently had the means to travel at will at least in part due to the death of his father after a divorce from his mother, who later divorced his stepfather as well. “I have been a beneficiary; on a small scale when I was younger and on a larger scale as I’ve gotten older, as my elders died off and their wills were read,” he writes. He continues, “I can write what I want without much interruption beyond the teaching I like to do….I worry about what I say, how I say it, and whether it will attract some readers, but not much about getting paid.” There is some purity in this confessional endeavor, and, as Clark freely acknowledges, narcissism. His immersion in the Victorians informs his diffuse reflections on his own writing, his religious conversion, his losses, and, ultimately, his emergence from the fog of that obsession. “That my interest in the Victorians is now no larger than any other interest of mine is, in retrospect, not surprising,” he writes, “though at the time it seemed a very sudden alteration….The Victorians and I were friends, but no more than that.”
A hodgepodge memoir in which the author experiences the full range of obsession.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-60938-667-2
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Univ. of Iowa
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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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