Nevertheless, as cultural history and biography this is both cogent and entertaining, if occasionally over-written.
Murray (Crosstown Traffic, not reviewed) turns his attention to one of Hendrix’s musical forebears, bluesman John Lee Hooker.
It is tempting to see Hooker, as Murray does, as an archetypal figure. Indeed, his story has been duplicated in the lives of many African-Americans who made the trek northward from the Mississippi Delta to the burgeoning industrial Midwest in search of an escape from the grinding poverty of sharecropping and the oppressions of Jim Crow. Hooker was born sometime between 1917 and 1920 (although he has claimed several other dates) near Clarksdale, Mississippi. He went north to Detroit just before WWII and, after a very brief stint in the Army, scuffled through a series of short-term day jobs, all the while expecting to make a living as a musician. Miraculously, he did just that, with a series of recordings made for a small label owned by Bernie Besman. One of the very first sides Hooker cut for Besman, “Boogie Chillen,” became an instant and enormous success—it continues to sell even today—and put Hooker on his way to fame. Since that explosion, Hooker’s career has charted the same ups and downs common to other blues giants of his generation (Muddy Waters comes to mind) with a mixture of classic blues recordings and misguided attempts to capture a rock audience. Now somewhere in his 80s, Hooker continues to tour with a band, an experience that Murray limns convincingly. The author’s reach often exceeds his grasp, however, as he tries to render Hooker as a larger-than-life figure of myth—even going so far as to invoke Joseph Campbell. Hooker is a musician, a master of a narrow slice of a much larger and complex pie called the blues; Murray should have let his story speak more for itself.
Nevertheless, as cultural history and biography this is both cogent and entertaining, if occasionally over-written.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-312-26563-8
Page Count: 544
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2000
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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