Pleasant enough, but in the end little more than a fan's notes.
The author recalls his years on the road with volatile and complex jazz musician Miles Davis.
In 1973, guitarist Murphy received a call to join Davis's entourage. He worked for the trumpet-player off and on through 1983, first as a stagehand and then as road manager, helping with everything from sound systems to procuring women. A startling, innovative talent, Davis began his career with Charley Parker's quintet in the 1940s, then broke away to become the embodiment of “cool jazz” in the ’50s. He reinvented himself several more times, even experimenting with rap before his death in 1991. In the ’70s, Davis rolled the influences of Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone into his repertoire, more or less inventing fusion. Many of Davis's loyalists from the good old days hated the extremely loud, amplified band (whose members used a lot of drugs) that Miles presided over during the period Murphy chronicles, but rock fans loved it, making Bitches Brew the bestselling jazz album in history. Murphy does little more here than string together anecdotes, with many a cameo from Bob Dylan to Waylon Jennings to the members of U2, but at least he manages to make Davis come across better than he did in Miles: The Autobiography (1989) and puts into context rumors of his bisexuality. Toward the end of Murphy's gig, Davis is in physical decline, much of it brought on by drug abuse, and these are the best, most affecting pages. Gratifyingly, a strong woman comes into Miles’s life: In part because of Cicely Tyson, Davis made another big comeback in the early ’80s with a series of concerts at the Lincoln Center. Though Murphy has his moments, he’s also quite idiosyncratic: His lengthy comparison of Davis with Ernest Hemingway seems odd at best, and his structure throughout is jagged and unbalanced.
Pleasant enough, but in the end little more than a fan's notes.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-56025-361-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2001
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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