Hendrix’s story is finally lost in a purple haze.
Kurt Cobain’s biographer takes on the great rock guitarist’s legacy and misses the mark.
Cross, former editor of the Seattle alternative weekly The Rocket, reached bestseller lists with his biography of Nirvana’s ill-fated front man (Heavier Than Heaven, 2001). In this book he reconsiders another Washington state icon, ‘60s rock superstar Jimi Hendrix. Due on the eve of the 35th anniversary of Hendrix’s death at 27 from an accidental overdose, Cross’ biography sits somewhat in the shadow of Keith Shadwick’s comprehensive Jimi Hendrix Musician (2003), as well as such precursors as Harry Shapiro and Caesar Glebbeek’s Jimi Hendrix: Electric Gypsy (1990) and Charles Shaar Murray’s Crosstown Traffic (1989). Cross is strongest in his chapters about Hendrix’s deprived upbringing in Seattle and the first stirrings of his musical urges, but his tales of Hendrix’s apprenticeship on the Southern chitlin’ circuit and his artistic development in the hipster cauldron of Greenwich Village in the mid-‘60s feel underreported. Worse, Hendrix’s 1966 arrival in London, where he quickly became the toast of English musical society, reads like a twice-told tale. We hear again that Hendrix slept with his guitar, but little attention is paid to exactly how he developed his stunning musical and technical gifts. His prodigious mastery of the studio, still a large part of the guitarist’s testament, receives virtually no scrutiny — his sessions are viewed as just part of the blur that accompanied his snowballing fame. While Hendrix’s ascent as a black musician playing for white rock ‘n’ roll audiences (and viewed in some quarters as a racial sell-out) is contemplated, Cross seems either unwilling or unable to grapple with this contradiction, which was so central to Hendrix’s inexorable rise. One ultimately understands that Hendrix was crushed by the burden of celebrity, but the sources of that celebrity remain vague.
Hendrix’s story is finally lost in a purple haze.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2005
ISBN: 1-4013-0028-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2005
IN THE NEWS
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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