A cartoonish biography of the eccentric comedian (currently the subject of a Milo— Forman biopic starring Jim Carrey) whose edgy, humorless, often hostile performances were considered avant-garde when he died of cancer at age 35 in 1984. Following Andy Kaufman Revealed!, a memoir by Kaufman sidekick Bob Zmuda (1999), journalist and Sinatra biographer Zehme (The Way You Wear Your Hat, not reviewed) asks whether the comedian’s bizarre characterizations, wrestling matches with women, and peculiar obsessions (transcendental meditation, Elvis Presley, chocolate ice cream, conga drums, sexual marathons with prostitutes) were the work of a rare, iconoclastic genius or the result of an undiagnosed mental illness. The answer, it would seem, is a little of both. In early childhood, Kaufman grew sullen when his Long Island mother gave some of her attention to his two younger siblings. Identifying with his showboating grandfathers and the heroes of children’s TV programs, young Andy began to entertain at neighborhood birthday parties. His success, along with his enthusiasm for all things Elvis, brought him to Manhattan, where he emerged from the city’s comedy clubs to practice his trademark annoying stunts. His reading of The Great Gatsby in an effete British accent, his inept “foreign man” (who later became Latka Grava on the TV sitcom Taxi), and his repugnant Las Vegas lounge-singer character shocked audiences who weren’t sure whether what they were seeing was a bad act or subversively clever performance art. Zehme shows how Kaufman, not content with the fame his TV appearances brought him, alienated many who wanted to help him before he died—a nonsmoking victim of lung cancer—as his fame and fortune were ebbing. Funny and tragic, as any comedian’s story must be—even if Zehme holds his subject at arm’s length, implying that a closer look might be too unsettling for Kaufman’s fans. (First serial excerpt rights to Rolling Stone)
Pub Date: Dec. 5, 1999
ISBN: 0-385-33371-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1999
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
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