Although the prose is occasionally dry, this in-depth portrait of Johnson’s life and times will be mighty hard to improve...
Fifty years in the making, a comprehensive biography of the legendary Delta blues singer.
Conforth (African American Folksong and American Cultural Politics: The Lawrence Gellert Story, 2013, etc.), the founding curator of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and blues historian Wardlow (Chasin’ that Devil Music: Searching for the Blues, 1998) waste little time taking on the myths and rumors previous books have promulgated about Robert Johnson (1911-1938). The authors seek to “return him to his human particulars” and reveal the “real story.” In order to do so, they have unearthed a massive amount of primary source materials, much of it reproduced here, and numerous “first-person accounts of who he really was.” They do a fine job of thoughtfully weaving the biographical essentials with portraits of the harsh and impoverished sharecropper’s world of the South in the 1920s and ’30s. Johnson was born in a tiny, ramshackle house near Hazlehurst, Mississippi, “the illegitimate son of two unmarried parents.” He hated farming, preferring to play harmonica and guitar. He grew up hearing cotton-field blues and embraced the music “like a boll weevil did a growing cotton ball.” He lived an itinerant existence, playing in jukes, roadhouses, family homes, and on the streets. He could read and write and drink—a lot—and womanize along the way, all the while perfecting his musical skills and learning from other musicians, like Willie Moore and Son House. Guitar fans will enjoy the detail the authors provide about Johnson’s unique style of playing and their in-depth discussions of his songs as well as their fascinating account of his historic 1936 recording sessions in Texas. The authors also refute the famous myths—e.g., that Johnson sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads and that he was poisoned. He had an ulcer and suffered from “esophageal varices,” which hemorrhaged.
Although the prose is occasionally dry, this in-depth portrait of Johnson’s life and times will be mighty hard to improve upon.Pub Date: June 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64160-094-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
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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