Ultimately, Benson moans his way through the entire experience, as though he couldn’t have foreseen the punishment he would...
The story of a naïve 20-something’s monthlong 2,000-mile bike trek, a journey designed to provide some direction to his life.
First-time memoirist and Portland, Oregon-based bike enthusiast Benson tells the all-too-familiar life story of the archetypal disaffected young white male just out of college putting himself through some masochistic Pilgrim’s Progress ordeal in order to make sense of his life. In the beginning, we find Benson in the Guatemalan jungle, where he soon grew tired of the backpacker’s life and decided he needed more than just rudderless experiences abroad to have a chance at spiritual fulfillment. Consequently, he and his girlfriend, Rachel, traveled back to the United States to embark on a grueling bike journey from their native Wisconsin all the way to western Oregon. To make the trip even more difficult, they imposed a strict one-month deadline for the adventure. However, the best American road narratives are borne out of leisurely pacing, often allowing for more randomness and serendipity to take place along the road. Benson and Rachel were so busy blazing toward their destination that they missed countless opportunities to connect with their surroundings or, more importantly, with each other. What we get instead is a lot of bellyaching about gnarly headwinds, sore legs, flat tires and sweaty armpits—and not much real drama otherwise. Furthermore, the author misses nearly every chance to find humor in their situation, instead dropping the F-bomb in every other sentence like some rogue Vice magazine correspondent (“Fuck the stupid Rockies. I didn’t need them”).
Ultimately, Benson moans his way through the entire experience, as though he couldn’t have foreseen the punishment he would absorb on this colossal but spiritually empty cycling journey.Pub Date: June 24, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-14-218064-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Plume
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 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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