This moving memoir by the famous poet’s son pulls no punches: James Dickey was a hard-drinking, prevaricating braggart whose bad behavior destroyed his family. Even so, to Christopher Dickey he was “father-poet-god” whom he loved in spite of his anger and bitterness. There was a reconciliation of sorts between Dickey and his son, Christopher (Innocent Blood, 1997, etc.), in the year or so prior to his death in January 1997. Christopher had limited contact with his father for nearly 20 years following the death of his mother in 1976. Dickey had a history of drunken loutishness and philandering; his son believes it was that and a mean-spirited neglect that drove his mother to drink herself to death. Two months after her funeral, Dickey married a student younger than Christopher. “I read about it in People,” writes the son. By all accounts, it was a violent marriage that included batterings and stabbings—of Dickey by his young, drug-addicted wife. Things started to unravel for the family, according to Christopher, with the widespread success of Deliverance and the film made from the novel. The younger Dickey was a stand-in during the filming and got a close-up view of his father’s dealings with director John Boorman and actors Burt Reynolds and Jon Voight. Dickey would leave the set in a snit: “Boorman had said he was interfering too much. Said the actors were upset by his presence.” He would return, of course, and play a memorable part as the sheriff. But for the younger Dickey, his father’s embarrassing, obnoxious behavior was only outdone by his “righteous fury” at his father for “settling for less . . . for artistic compromises” in the making of the film. Dickey’s latter years saw him alternate between the celebrated, half-mad poet he had been and the sick, pathetic drunkard he became. An amazing portrait of a man who was a destructive force with a larger-than-life ego and who was also a man of intense passion, high intellect, and a delicate, artistic sensitivity. (First serial to the New Yorker)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-684-84202-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1998
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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