Enough already.
Slapdash account that adds a few grains of new information to the Monroe file with transcripts of tapes the actress made for her psychiatrist.
Boasting the dubious distinction of participation in both the Monroe and the Kennedy industries (The Men Who Murdered Marilyn, 1997; Vendetta: The Kennedys, 1993, etc.), Smith obviously has no problem with beating a dead horse. The tape transcripts run for just a few pages and reveal little of significance, and before even turning to those monologues the author devotes half his narrative to rehashing the details of Monroe’s death. Agatha Christie herself would have been challenged to connect the dots of the evidence at the scene. Jars of pills by the bedside first stood empty, then filled. The bedroom first looked neat and orderly, then chaotic, with papers strewn about. A washing machine hummed in the background—someone washing away evidence, perhaps? Smith does not believe her psychiatrist and the Kennedys killed Monroe, as others have claimed. Instead, he suggests the culprits were CIA operatives eager to topple a political dynasty by setting up the star’s death as a Kennedy plot. The idea seems plausible, though Smith builds his thesis on a stack of ifs, maybes, and might-have-beens. As for Monroe’s tapes, they cover such unedifying topics as taking enemas and having sex with Joan Crawford, plus a few predictable comments about working with Laurence Olivier (“a great, great actor”) and the peculiar remark—perhaps Monroe was just being funny—that the Bible is “a good script.” The repetitious, disorganized text contains glaring factual errors (Garson Kanin, not George Cukor, directed My Favorite Wife; Judy Garland was a young teen in the 1930s, not the 1950s) and enough grammatical howlers to give an English teacher a migraine.
Enough already.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-7867-1380-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2004
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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