Painting a life both shallow and deep, painstakingly choreographed and unscripted, Jenner’s candid portrait of a self in the...
A rugged tale of brute beauty and pyrrhic individualism.
When Bruce Jenner took his iconic victory lap around Montreal’s Olympic Stadium on July 30, 1976, he invited the world to witness the zenith of his triumphant transformation from talented small-town athlete to Superman-like decathlete for the ages. Fast-forward nearly 40 years, when he found himself nearly powerless on the side of the road, begging TMZ not to publish word of his tracheal shave that would signal to the world, and especially to those dear to him, an even greater physical transformation he was then desperate to conceal. Shuttling between past and recent watershed moments in this intimate tell-all memoir, Jenner now recounts path-breaking strides and missteps on the road from Bruce, who “existed for sixty-five years,” to Caitlyn, “just going on her second birthday.” With the help of Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Bissinger, who penned the 2015 Vanity Fair feature accompanying Annie Leibovitz’s first portraits of Caitlyn, Jenner explores extraordinary episodes in the years spent attempting to reconcile Bruce’s “public figure” with his “private shadow” as he negotiated multiple marriages, children, and various careers, all while wrestling with the self-described gender dysphoria that led him to identify as female as early as age 10. Referring to his years of Olympic training as the “Grand Diversion” from innate gender issues, the author insists, “Bruce was not a lie. Bruce existed: what I did lie about or at least obfuscate was Caitlyn’s existence.” He describes pivotal moments, such as first wife Chrystie’s 1973 discovery of her husband’s “gender issues,” and he provides insight into the hollow, post-Olympic years spent doing motivational speeches on overcoming the competitor within while sporting “panties and a bra and pantyhose” beneath his business suit.
Painting a life both shallow and deep, painstakingly choreographed and unscripted, Jenner’s candid portrait of a self in the remaking is a marvel to behold.Pub Date: April 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4555-9675-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 25, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017
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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