A balanced biography that gives credit where it is due.
A pioneering musical artist belatedly receives her first biography.
In 1968, the release of Switched-On Bach blew the doors open for the acceptance of synthesizers in music. That album was created by Wendy Carlos (b. 1939), who was born Walter Carlos before transitioning to Wendy. Though she wouldn’t undergo “gender confirmation surgery” until 1972 and wouldn’t go public with her gender identity until the end of that decade, the artist the public knew as Walter was deeply closeted and “nowhere to be found” as the album became a critical and commercial success. Sewell, music director of Interlochen Public Radio, focuses more on Carlos’ music than on her personal life, as Carlos would clearly wish, though she didn’t participate in this book or consent to an interview. Nonetheless, the author demonstrates that she was as important to the success of the Moog synthesizer as the Moog was for her, that she was a pioneering artist in ambient music as well, and that she dismissed being pigeonholed for her synthesized Bach. Sewell shows that she is a difficult woman who has fallen out with friends and collaborators, filed suit against those who attempt to stream or sell her music—currently unavailable except through back channels and secondary sources—and accused the “New York musical mafia” of killing her career by ignoring her. Her unexpected initial success, writes the author, was “both a dream come true and an absolute nightmare come to life,” and she continued to shrink from public view just as public interest hit its peak. Subsequently, it became increasingly challenging to promote an artist who wouldn’t perform or appear in public, resisted being photographed, and wanted absolute control over everything, from her rare interviews to the way her music was sold. Sewell, who does solid excavation work, includes a discography and videography as well as a glossary of “terms and concepts related to gender identity.”
A balanced biography that gives credit where it is due.Pub Date: April 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-19-005346-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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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