All the Robbins biographies have their merits, but this empathetic and accessible take is the one most likely to appeal to...
Greg Lawrence exposed a monster (Dance with Demons, 2001), and Deborah Jowitt honored a choreographer (Jerome Robbins, 2004), but Vaill captures a human being in her account of the man who transformed 20th-century Broadway and ballet.
As she did in her biography of Gerald and Sara Murphy (Everybody Was So Young, 1998), the author takes what seems like a shopworn subject and refreshes it with her discerning eye. In her view, Jerome Robbins (1918–98) was driven by the fear that sooner or later he would be exposed as, in his words, “not talented . . . a little Jewish kike.” His art always yearned for a place where he would be accepted and wholeheartedly loved—the “Somewhere” of West Side Story, the paradigm-altering musical Robbins conceived, choreographed and directed in 1957. That fear may have fueled his notorious cruelty in rehearsals (acknowledged but not dwelled on by the author) and his reluctant naming of names for HUAC in 1953 (Vaill blames his lawyer, possibly an FBI informant). It might also explain his tendency toward three-sided affairs that precluded permanent commitment to a man or woman. (Famous bedmates included Montgomery Clift, Slim Hayward, Nora Kaye and perhaps Leonard Bernstein; the predominantly homosexual Robbins had a deep need for female companionship and love.) On the subject of his brilliant career in two fields, Vaill does better with the Broadway side—On the Town, Gypsy, The King and I, etc.—but capably covers his efforts to make ballet an American form, from Fancy Free when he was only 25 to his years with New York City Ballet as resident choreographer second only (but always) to Balanchine. The author doesn’t really try to parse Robbins’s complex relationship with Mr. B., nor does she spend much time considering why he walked away from Broadway at the height of his commercial success with Fiddler on the Roof for the more austere rewards of ballets like Dances at a Gathering. She emphasizes the artistic commitment and courage of an amazingly unhappy, neurotic man whose triumphs were commensurate with the tortures through which he put himself and everyone around him in order to achieve.
All the Robbins biographies have their merits, but this empathetic and accessible take is the one most likely to appeal to general readers.Pub Date: Nov. 21, 2006
ISBN: 0-7679-0420-6
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2006
PROFILES
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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