An appealing miscellany.
Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist, children’s book author, and cultural observer Lurie (Emerita, English/Cornell Univ.; The Language of Houses: How Buildings Speak to Us, 2014, etc.) offers a personal perspective on literature, feminism, fashion, and treasured friendships.
Although a few of the essays—e.g., on women’s decisions to change their surnames after marriage, the meaning of aprons, or fashion’s arcane rules—seem dated and others rather slight, most are engaging. Among the liveliest are the author’s recollections of friendships with editor Barbara Epstein, writer and artist Edward Gorey, and poet James Merrill. Lurie met Epstein when both were students at Radcliffe—in the 1940s, Radcliffe women were “poor relations” compared to Harvard men, Lurie recalls in “Their Harvard”—and was impressed at once by her “quiet, often almost invisible brilliance” and her capacious reading. When Epstein became editor at the New York Review of Books, Lurie relied gratefully on both her editorial skill and “remarkable” tact. Also remembered with affection is the “immensely intelligent, perceptive, amusing, inventive, skeptical,” and “scarily gifted artist” Gorey, whom Lurie first met at a quirky bookstore in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They took excursions to make tombstone rubbings, were involved in the Poets’ Theatre of Cambridge, and, later, when both lived in Manhattan, became best friends. Gorey was inspired to write The Doubtful Guest by Lurie’s offhand comment that having a young child around all the time “was like having a houseguest who never said anything and never left.” Equally warm is Lurie’s portrait of Merrill, whom she admired for “how intensely aware he was of language, even in the most casual and banal circumstances.” One of the longest, and most captivating, essays, “What Happened in Hamlet,” recounts Lurie’s experience watching a month of rehearsals as Jonathan Miller directed the play in 1974, with Irene Worth as Gertrude and Peter Eyre as the beleaguered prince. Worth, Lurie writes, even offstage, emoted as if she had an audience of 500. Musings on “Pinocchio,” the Babar tales, Harry Potter, and “Rapunzel” stand out among essays on children’s books.
An appealing miscellany.Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-883285-78-4
Page Count: 225
Publisher: Delphinium
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
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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