An imperfect grab-bag of ruminations that reflect a likable nerdy enthusiasm.
A freewheeling assortment of essays that bring surprising weight to ephemera like Dungeon & Dragons, Doritos and household repair.
Monson (Neck Deep and Other Predicaments, 2007, etc.) loosely conceives the book as a commentary on memoir and how the act of storytelling permits writers to carefully structure their identities. The author deploys a number of metatextual flourishes to get that idea across. He places passages from dozens of memoirs together to undercut their claims of unique emotional experience, runs the text of one essay without margins to show how strictly framed many stories are and opens an essay on solipsism by filling two pages with the word “me.” Moreover, certain keywords are flagged as subjects for further discussion on his website, otherelectricities.com, implying that any statements made between the covers is unstable. Monson earns the right to much of his gamesmanship, bringing a sharp humor and intellectual rigor to his essays. In “Voir Dire,” a piece about his experience as a jury foreman, he performs a close study of how trials are similar to stories, and how we apply our own experiences to others’ in the courtroom. “Transubstantiation” opens with an appreciation of snack chips; instead of slipping into the self-obsession he dreads, the author provides genuine insight into the distinction between real and fake, both in Doritos and in personalities. Not all of Monson’s pieces reflect such ingenuity. The text is littered with paragraph-long scraps of analysis of memoirs that seem ripe for either expansion or removal. Though the essay on bad pop songs sung by collegiate a cappella groups is good for a good laughs, Monson fails to spin the piece into a larger statement. Role-playing games are right in his wheelhouse, though, and he successfully uses the 2008 death of Dungeons & Dragons creator Gary Gygax to consider the nature of obsession with creating “other” selves, and how easily we snap into those roles.
An imperfect grab-bag of ruminations that reflect a likable nerdy enthusiasm.Pub Date: April 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-55597-554-8
Page Count: 196
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
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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