Although the Gelbs deeply admire O’Neill’s talents, they portray the same cruel and desperately unhappy man who emerges from...
A biography of the playwright who was haunted by three wives and his mother.
Arthur Gelb (1924-2014), who served as managing editor of the New York Times, and his wife, Barbara, have devoted their careers to chronicling the life of Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953). In 1962, their 964-page O’Neill was published after they were approached by a publisher who knew they admired O’Neill’s plays. At the time, little was known about the playwright whose works were being revived on Broadway, to great acclaim, and the Gelbs wondered how much the plays were based on his life. In the next decades, they revised the biography several times and then, in 2000, published O’Neill: Life with Monte Cristo, intended to be the first of three volumes updating their original biography with newly available archival sources. Since the publication of their first biography, however, O’Neill has been the subject of much attention: studies of his work habits; correspondence with his editor, Saxe Commins, film producer Kenneth Macgowan, and theater critic George Jean Nathan; a two-volume biography by Louis Sheaffer; O’Neill’s Creative Struggle by Doris Alexander; and most recently, an excellent biography by Robert Dowling (Eugene O’Neill: A Life in Four Acts, 2014). The Gelbs’ new portrait embellishes, but does not alter, the image of O’Neill revealed elsewhere: a man beset by demons, especially “the terror evoked” by his mother’s “morphine-induced tantrums” as he was growing up, which the Gelbs thought they had not sufficiently examined. He was an alcoholic, treated his wives abusively, and neglected his children, especially his unwanted son Shane, who was subjected to his father’s “stony anger” and whom O’Neill disinherited, along with his sister, Oona. The authors draw on extensive interviews with O’Neill’s melodramatic, often spiteful third wife, Carlotta, to convey the volatility of their marriage. In his plays, they argue, O’Neill created “a family dynasty” that replaced his actual family.
Although the Gelbs deeply admire O’Neill’s talents, they portray the same cruel and desperately unhappy man who emerges from many other biographies.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-399-15911-4
Page Count: 896
Publisher: Marian Wood/Putnam
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
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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