This July, the world's most famous drummer turns 52—old enough, it seems, to merit a full-length biography. And so from British rock-musician/writer Clayson (who chronicled Roy Orbison's life in Only the Lonely, 1989) comes an affectionate, well- researched, moderately incisive look at the Beatle who kept the beat. That Ringo is the last Beatle to be biographed isn't surprising. As Clayson emphasizes—hence the subtitle—Ringo's story has always been one of a struggle for identity. Drawing on archival material and myriad interviews (though none with any surviving Beatle), Clayson traces his subject's Liverpool youth (mostly well adjusted, even after early desertion by his dad and a battery of serious illnesses); rise to modest local fame as a drummer; and tapping by the Beatles in 1962 to replace their odd- man-out drummer Pete Best (who, despite drawing the short straw of the century, is today, it's nice to learn, a happy civil servant and fixture at Beatles conventions). But once a Beatle, Ringo's star, for all its luster, began to wobble as he was kept by the rest of the Fab Four from any significant role as a singer or songwriter: He was, Clayson says, the first of the group to smoke marijuana. And despite—as Clayson's intelligent musicological analysis makes clear—Ringo's great influence, if not skill, as a drummer, his career plummeted after the Beatles' breakup. What's an ex-Beatle to do? In Ringo's case, issue a series of increasingly awful albums, act in some forgettable movies—and finally coast into an alcoholic haze, from which he recently has emerged, with a new album and an American tour in the wings. A poignant portrait of an ordinary man cast in an extraordinary role—and just barely surviving. (Eight pages of b&w photographs.)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1992
ISBN: 1-55778-575-9
Page Count: 312
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
© Copyright 2025 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.
