An unauthorized (and the first full-length) biography of the grande dame of southern literature succeeds only partially in its daunting task: to shed light on the personal life of an intensely private woman who prefers that her work speak for itself. Faced with Welty’s polite but firm refusal to cooperate, Waldron (Hodding Carter: The Reconstruction of a Racist, 1993) perseveres where several potential biographers quit. Shut out by Welty’s friends, she gleans what she can from letters, other writers’ biographies, and distant acquaintances. Welty’s autobiographical writing—One Writer’s Beginnings and prefaces to her photography collections—provides additional background already known to devotees. Waldron’s main accomplishment is consolidating the writer’s far-flung commentary on her work from newspapers and writing-anthology interviews. Waldron remains respectful, even when entertaining speculation about the unmarried writer’s sexuality, including the nature of her intense friendship with British writer Elizabeth Bowen, or her difficult relationship with her mother. The literary influence of Katherine Anne Porter and agent Diarmuid Russell are detailed, as is Welty’s antipathy for Carson McCullers. Revelations are generally minor (her first book, A Curtain of Green, was titled by her publisher’s sales staff, for example), but there are genuine insights. Examining the society column Welty wrote in the 1930s for the Memphis Commercial Appeal, Waldron sees “flashes of the wit and the eye for detail, even the feeling for family, that would distinguish Eudora’s fiction.” She finds it notable that, despite familiarity with upper-class society, Welty “did not become the Edith Wharton of Jackson,” a chronicler of belles and balls, but wrote about poor whites and blacks she met on her travels as a WPA publicist. The chapter on Welty’s WPA work illustrates what is perhaps an unavoidable shortcoming (but a shortcoming nonetheless): Waldron’s research yields barely three pages on this important formative period. A passable introduction to a hugely important writer—more a starting point than a comprehensive summing up. (8 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-385-47647-7
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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