A patchy work of pop history that tells more than it shows.
A chaotic cultural chronicle of a great city during a pivotal year.
A lot was happening in Boston in 1968. Looking back, writes musician and music critic Walsh, “is like catching a glimpse of an upside down, hallucinogenic version of the thriving metropolis that stands today.” In his first book, the author attempts to bring it all back home, to connect a tangle of loose wires and see what one thing might have had to do with the other. Over here, we have Irish transplant Van Morrison, set to make his greatest album: a one-of-a-kind, stream-of-consciousness song cycle steeped in death and rebirth and “completely preoccupied with notions and transcendence and the sublime.” Over there, we have Mel Lyman, the writer and musician who established a worshipful cult following known as the Fort Hill Community. At the same time, MGM Records was trying to invent a genre called the Boston Sound, which garnered more press than listeners. There was also a cut-up collage program on local TV, What’s Happening, Mr. Silver? that was capturing everyone’s attention. The documentarian Frederick Wiseman was upsetting officials with Titicut Follies, the movie The Boston Strangler was trying an unresolved case on screen, and a pre–Ram Dass Richard Alpert was turning on and tuning in with Timothy Leary. Walsh delivers plenty of information and offers some insightful stories about this time—particularly about the making of Morrison’s masterpiece—and occasionally draws some interesting associations: the mystical influences, for example, that inspired the Velvet Underground, their acolyte Jonathan Richman, and Morrison himself. Unfortunately, the narrative parts fail to fully cohere. Unlike Will Hermes’ Love Goes to Buildings on Fire (2011), which fully captured the changing cultural landscape of a thriving city (New York), no clear image ever quite emerges and nothing solid develops from all these coincidences.
A patchy work of pop history that tells more than it shows.Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2134-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
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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