An unconventional narrative that focuses on sharp, piercing moments.
PEN/Hemingway Award winner Cooper (The Bill from My Father: A Memoir, 2006, etc.) returns with a memoir/essay collection (some previously published) that chronicles his early interest in pop art and charts where that interest has taken him.
It began in the author’s junior high school library (in the early 1960s) when a Life magazine piece about pop art caught his fancy. He tore it out, and his adult life began. Cooper tells us how he pursued this growing obsession in local bookstores, watched a TV art teacher (Jon Gnagy) and eventually realized that art “didn’t have to be somber and lofty; it could be as laughable and blunt as a pratfall.” The author’s interests—and his creations—puzzled his parents, but he persisted. At about the same time, Cooper was also realizing he was homosexual, an orientation he had to conceal fiercely during his youth. He dated women, but he yearned for men. He shares memories of his parents, of his school days (experiencing a gym teacher who paddled, learning about the JFK assassination from that same teacher), his search for technique, and his years as a student at CalArts, which opened its doors just at the time he was ready to walk through them. Cooper writes fondly of some instructors at the school, and he notes how he began to realize that he had talents for writing, as well. An art teacher told him, “[s]ounds like you’re ready to write.” And so he did: He spent some years as an art critic and a few as a writing instructor. Cooper also deals with crises in his life, including the death of his mother and the grim arrival of AIDS in his world. His account of the suffering of his partner is one of the most wrenching sections, and he concludes with a brief passage about his chronic insomnia. Throughout, his sentences elicit laughs, gasps and tears.
An unconventional narrative that focuses on sharp, piercing moments.Pub Date: Feb. 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-0393240719
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
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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