A humorous, cerebral and daringly written memoir.
An acclaimed poet proves his versatility in his gut-busting memoir on jokes.
In his debut memoir, Hudgins (English/Ohio State Univ.; American Rendering, 2010, etc.) admits his Achilles’ heel for clowning. “Since junior high, I’ve been a joker, a punster, a laugher,” he writes, “someone who will say almost anything for a laugh.” In his memoir, he also proves that he will write anything for a laugh as well. No terrain proves too taboo for Hudgins, who dispenses racial jokes, misogynistic jokes and jokes in which Jesus and dead babies make appearances in the punch lines. Yet his often-bawdy material probes depths far beneath the jokes themselves, providing opportunities to examine his life through a humorous lens. Hudgins recounts his evolution from grade school clown to college-age clown to married (and later divorced) clown, but he’s at his best when moving beyond himself and providing the historical context for his punch lines. While tightrope walking along the perilous subject of racial jokes, Hudgins' true contribution comes from his commentary on growing up in the segregated South. His discussion on jokes as a regional defense mechanism—one that exposes the fears and biases of the time—prompts new thinking on a subject often overlooked: i.e., the attempt to shroud America’s past lunacy in laughter. “Jokes are often—some would say always—intricately wound up with power,” he writes, a claim all the more powerful given his Southern upbringing. As Hudgins proves, jokes provide various other functions as well, including a test of the teller’s ability to read his audience. As the author has learned, humor is no universal language, though thankfully, he possesses the skills to prompt readers to examine their own complex relationships with chuckles, guffaws and groans.
A humorous, cerebral and daringly written memoir.Pub Date: June 11, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4767-1271-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
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 2026 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.
