A tone of whininess undermines the author’s sharp perceptions.
Chronicles of fame, mishaps, and assorted grievances.
In 1986, Janowitz (They Is Us, 2009, etc.) became “semi-famous,” she writes, with the publication of the story collection Slaves of New York, putting her in the company of the Literary Brat Pack along with Jay McInerney and Bret Easton Ellis. “Here’s what we had in common,” she writes: “the fact that our books were not supposed to become big sellers and were never expected to get any attention, but actually did.” Janowitz continued to publish novels and stories, some made into films; she attended glitzy, star-filled parties and counted among her celebrity friends Joan Rivers (“warm, yet driven to achievement”), Lou Reed (“easy to talk to”), Andy Warhol, with whom she dined a few times a week, and Elizabeth Hardwick, her teacher at Barnard College. Janowitz’s frank, sometimes funny, often repetitious memoir imparts tart literary gossip but focuses mostly on her hardscrabble life: living in poverty with her mother after her parents divorced and, even as a successful writer, always worried about money. Homes included a “former meat locker” in Manhattan, a claustrophobic trailer with no running water, and a crumbling house in upstate New York, which she shared with a bunch of rowdy poodles. The author recounts her unstable, philandering father, a psychiatrist addicted to marijuana who sent her hate letters each time she visited; her sullen teenage daughter; and her mother, whom she moved from one nursing home to another as her dementia worsened and whose decrepit house she spent years cleaning out. After her mother died, her vindictive brother besieged her with angry emails threatening to charge her with embezzlement from their mother’s retirement funds. Fearful, irritating, and needy, the author tends to see the dark side of every experience. She glosses over posh travel assignments, for example, to detail an abortive effort to interview a belligerent hit man.
A tone of whininess undermines the author’s sharp perceptions.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-239132-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
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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