A pop-culture journey to self-realization that makes some intriguing stops before it runs out of gas.
What we talk about when we talk about the Beatles vs. the Stones, Hendrix vs. Clapton, and Biggie vs. Tupac.
In his first book, music critic Hyden makes a whimsical, semiserious, somewhat wearisome personal attempt to plumb famous musical rifts for deeper truths, and he succeeds a little more than half the time. In some cases, the showdown between major acts reveals the assumptions of the audience. Is Oasis the conventional band and Blur the more discerning one, or is Oasis honest and straightforward while Blur struggles under the weight of its own pretentiousness? Is Jimi Hendrix more popular than Eric Clapton because he died young, while the surviving guitar god is doomed to shrink into mediocrity? Hyden also focuses on how musical acts are formed by their struggles and rivals, such as the way Pearl Jam was pushed in new directions by Nirvana. The author makes a fascinating case that Jack White’s famous public loathing for the Black Keys' Dan Auerbach is really about male one-upmanship and that the dustup between Miley Cyrus and Sinead O'Connor represents a generation gap between very different types of rebels, each talking past the other. Unfortunately, Hyden has less to say as the book goes along, and his attempt to make ever more off-the-wall connections becomes desperate, such as when he compares Roger Waters and his estranged band mates in Pink Floyd to Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien; or when he decides the Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan and Pavement's Stephen Malkmus are kind of like Nixon and JFK. There's certainly an autobiographical element to all this, as Hyden tries to squeeze life lessons of maturity from every battle, but he ultimately comes off sounding older rather than wiser. Other rivalries explored include Taylor Swift vs. Kanye West, Toby Keith vs. the Dixie Chicks, and Prince vs. Michael Jackson.
A pop-culture journey to self-realization that makes some intriguing stops before it runs out of gas.Pub Date: May 17, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-316-25915-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Back Bay/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
