Despite occasional insight, a lack of continuity makes the book, despite the author’s reverence and enthusiasm, a missed...
An unconventional analysis of the cultural phenomenon of superheroes that goes far beyond comic books.
The cultural saturation of superheroes may have reached its zenith. Each year, Hollywood continues to release more big-budget superhero movies from the Marvel universe and beyond, earning billions of dollars. However, as Gavaler (English/Washington and Lee Univ.; School for Tricksters, 2011, etc.) points out in his attempt to trace the cult of superhero archetypes through history, the obsession with superheroes is hardly new. The common tropes of the superhero, including “secret identities, aliases, disguises, signature symbols, traumatic origins, extraordinary powers, [and] self-sacrificing altruism,” were already accepted standards of heroic literature and mythology long before Superman first appeared in Action Comics in 1938. In his analysis, Gavaler hunts down examples to show how the concept of the superhero has been a mainstay of Western culture for centuries, citing the comparison of the superhero to a god figure, the superhero as revolutionary, and the influence of evolution on superhero identity. It’s an ambitious project, but the author’s vague thesis and exceptionally broad definition of “superhero” make nearly all of his supporting examples valid despite how irrelevant—e.g. Jean Valjean of Les Miserables. By Gavaler’s standards, superheroes are easily mistaken for the protagonist or hero (of the nonsuper variety) of a narrative. Moreover, the author divides his narrative by selective subject matter that is not cohesive to a single argument, often leaving readers puzzled. More problematic still is Gavaler’s tenuous string of examples—on multiple occasions, the author prefaces a statement with, “I don’t know if…”—which creates a rambling and discontinuous quality to his writing, further exacerbated by insertions of personal stories from reading comics as a boy and teaching them as a professor.
Despite occasional insight, a lack of continuity makes the book, despite the author’s reverence and enthusiasm, a missed opportunity.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-60938-381-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Univ. of Iowa
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
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
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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