A brisk narrative and sensitive insights make this book a delight.
The story of the beloved American novelist’s nearly 12 years abroad.
Peripatetic Mark Twain (1835-1910) traveled the world, beginning in 1867 with a five-month, 20,000-mile journey to 15 ports in eight countries. That adventure resulted in his first travel book, Innocents Abroad (1869), which introduced its irreverent, insouciant narrator, the American Vandal: “a brazen, unapologetic visitor to foreign lands, generally unimpressed with the local ambience—to say nothing of the local inhabitants—but ever ready to appropriate any religious or historical trinket he or she could carry off.” In this vibrant, fresh look at the venerable writer, historian Morris (Declaring His Genius: Oscar Wilde in North America, 2013, etc.) traces Twain’s journeys and his evolving perspective on world politics and peoples. More than a decade after his first trip, Twain, his wife and two of their daughters embarked on a European adventure to gather material for A Tramp Abroad (1880). Despite the jaunty title, Twain found that he was no longer an American Vandal but “a well-tailored, respectable middle-aged Easterner…who now confronted European culture on his own relatively sophisticated terms.” His self-image changed more dramatically during a long journey that included India and Africa, chronicled in Following the Equator (1897). “Twain, for all his joking facade, was a keen and sensitive observer,” the author contends, “and his recent world tour had brought him face to face with the myriad horrors of power politics.” As one scholar put it, Twain saw that the “vandals have evolved into oppressors.” Returning from another trip in 1904, he joined the Anti-Imperialist League. Morris sets Twain’s travels in the context of his financial problems, family tensions and wrenching loss: He and Livy were in Europe when their beloved daughter, Susy, died of spinal meningitis; Livy died in Florence; and as he aged, Twain lost many dear friends.
A brisk narrative and sensitive insights make this book a delight.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0674416697
Page Count: 236
Publisher: Belknap/Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
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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