The epic biography that Carver deserves.
A rich portrait of a master of the American short story.
The life of Raymond Carver (1938–1988) hews closely to a heroic arc: a hardscrabble childhood, a noble struggle for success, a fall from grace and ultimate redemption. But Sklenicka wisely avoids hagiography, sticking to the facts while astutely connecting real-life details to Carver’s stories and poems. Born in Oregon, Carver began his writing career in earnest in the early 1960s at Chico State University under the tutelage of novelist John Gardner, earning publications in small literary magazines. He traveled often during his early years with his first wife, Maryann, and two children, as he scrounged for whatever academic appointments might enable him to write his ironic, pointed stories about working-class lives. By the early ’70s those stories caught the attention of Esquire fiction editor Gordon Lish, but Carver’s finances were in a shambles—he would declare bankruptcy twice in his lifetime—and his alcoholism had deepened. Sklenicka captures many heartbreaking moments from that period—never more harrowing than when he smashed a wine bottle against Maryann’s head, nearly killing her. Carver stopped drinking in 1977, and in his final years he wrote many of the stories that his towering reputation is now built on. The “Good Ray” that replaced the “Bad Ray” of the alcoholic years was a gentle man who too often acceded to the demands of people like Lish, who invented much of Carver’s “minimalist” reputation by aggressively editing and rewriting his stories. In his final years, though, he earned enough clout and confidence to be nobody’s pushover. Sklenicka spoke with nearly everyone in Carver’s orbit, making the book a kind of history of American fiction in the ’70s and ’80s, capturing the crucial writers (Richard Ford, Tobias Wolff, John Cheever) and sea changes in the publishing industry that made Carver such a powerful influence on writers today.
The epic biography that Carver deserves.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-7432-6245-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
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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