A frenetic, inflated outing with one of the world's great filmmakers, who died in 1993 at the age of 73. Except for a brief afterword, Chandler (The Ultimate Seduction, 1984, etc.) seems content to turn the tape recorder on and let Fellini ramble away in his inimitable stream-of- consciousness style. So we are treated to Fellini on dogs (he likes them), astrology (might be something in it), bicycling (a sensible way to get about), and occasionally a choice tidbit about one of his films, such as La Dolce Vita or La Strada. Repetitiousness is just one of the many Fellini-esque excesses indulged in here: epicurean ecstasies on food, unreconstructed ravings on women, and dream after dream after dream. At times it feels like being trapped in a small room with a madman. And yet moments of pure insight, epiphanic understanding of the human condition keep breaking through, like flecks of gold uncovered in the dust. This is also as close an approximation of an autobiography as we'll ever get (and Chandler is to be commended, at least, for imposing a rough kind of chronology and structure onto the material). Fellini superstitiously thought an autobiography would spell the end of his career and hasten his death. He also thought the mundane reality of dates and events paled in comparison with the cherished realm of ``fantasies, dreams, and imagination. That is the real person, naked.'' Like Freud, Fellini was a relentless explorer of the unconscious. He was also unique among major directors for dubbing his movies. For him, it was the face, the gesture, the mien that was important. Actors could say anything as long as the visual reality was right. The proper dialogue could always be dubbed later. If only such a thing were possible here. Instead, we get Fellini in too many of his own words. (32 pages b&w photos, not seen) (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-44032-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1995
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
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