Interesting, long-repressed tales from a humble man relieved not to “have to remember anymore.”
A veteran remembers his small part in great events of the Pacific War.
Escaping a struggling Arkansas farm family, 16-year-old Ray Daves joined the Civilian Conservation Corps, and in 1939, after lying about his age, the Navy. During the next six years, advancing in rank at nearly every stop, he served as a radioman aboard many vessels and at a variety of land stations including Cold Bay and Kodiak, Ala., where he flew some search-and-destroy missions and observed the uneasy alliance between the Soviets and the Americans; Gulfport, Miss., where he celebrated V-J Day; and the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, then hard at work on part of the Manhattan Project. The heart of this memoir, however, is his eyewitness report of combat, first at Pearl Harbor, where he suffered a shrapnel wound, and then at the Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway, where he survived the torpedoing of the Yorktown. For most of us, these signal events have been quietly committed to history. For Daves, the odor of burnt human flesh and the image of an onrushing Japanese pilot continue to haunt. Daves’s incident-filled career included brushes with fame—actor John Wayne, concert violinist Yehudi Menuhin, Admiral Chester Nimitz—and a prolonged and long-distance courtship of the girl to whom he remains married. A kind of one-man Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Daves seems to understand and appreciate the minor role he played in momentous events. He still mourns the many friends lost in battle and, at this late stage in life, has finally been persuaded to speak in detail about his war. Hipperson (The Belly Gunner, 2001, etc.) smartly stays out of the way, basing her text on extensive interviews with her subject and adopting a first-person narration that permits Daves to emerge as the authentic voice and hero—a tag he would vigorously reject—of this straightforward, unassuming story.
Interesting, long-repressed tales from a humble man relieved not to “have to remember anymore.”Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-38694-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dunne/Minotaur
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2008
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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