A pleasure for fans and encouragement for novices to tune in.
A memoir of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll that’s long on wry humor and short on—well, sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll.
North Carolina–raised Folds describes himself, with a kind of literary crooked smile, as the sort of person who’s likely to be seen pacing around in his boxer shorts in his front yard, coffee cup in hand, working out the lyrics or melody to one of his songs. A master of the short story in song—see “Army” on the 1999 album The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner—Folds writes of growing up obsessed by music and bursting with creativity, which landed him in a psychologist’s office in a blue-collar South in which “ ‘artsy’ things would normally have been written off as being ‘for queers.’ ” A fierce advocate and ally was his mother, who, with his father, indulged him “as I terrorized the household with painfully long sessions of repeated phrases at the piano or snare drum.” Clearly gifted, he enrolled in an alternative high school with patient music teachers. Later in the book, the author encourages his fellow musicians to take up the cause of music teachers “unless you really believe you learned nothing from them,” in which case, he gamely ventures, they should take up the cause of reforming anti-marijuana laws. There are nice notes throughout the text, including an early pledge to himself not to perform anyone’s songs but his own and the excitement of releasing his first album, which, he writes, might not be a masterpiece but still found his band, Ben Folds Five, giving their all: "From then on we would only do exactly what felt right.” What felt right led him to a kind of cult-classic status, to say nothing of friendships with the likes of Neil Gaiman and William Shatner, the latter of whom provides some entertaining anecdotes. Ultimately, Folds delivers an amiable and low-key memoir without the tawdry pyrotechnics of most rock biographies.
A pleasure for fans and encouragement for novices to tune in.Pub Date: July 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-984817-27-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
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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