A biography notable for its deep research.
The enigmatic novelist Graham Greene (1904-1991) inspires a new investigation.
In his literary debut, Hull (Spanish & Latin American Studies/Univ. of Chester) minutely examines the plot, characters, context, creation, reception, filming, and afterlife of Greene’s 1958 satirical novel, Our Man in Havana. Drawing on Greene’s published and unpublished writings; studies and biographies of Greene; abundant archival material; and his own 17 visits to Cuba, Hull sets Greene’s life amid Cuba’s tumultuous history. Compared to “the Hemingway cult in Havana,” Greene’s “many visits to his preferred watering and feeding hole,” Hull laments, have gone unacknowledged. He aims to correct this oversight by meticulously documenting every step that Greene took, every diary entry he logged, and every letter he wrote to his wife and several mistresses concerning his many visits to Cuba and the writing and filming of his novel. Despite Hull’s valiant efforts, though, his portrait of Greene is overly familiar: a troubled man, restless, self-absorbed, and moody, a manic-depressive who sought relief from his “tormented self” (as well as his many romantic crises) by traveling to “risky, seedy, and distant troubled locations.” Among the seediest was pre-Castro Cuba, reputed to be “an uninhibited tropical paradise,” where gambling casinos, brothels, bars, and risqué nightclubs flourished. Beginning in 1954, with an unplanned two-night detour to Havana, Greene, with his “magnetic attraction to seediness,” partook of all Cuba’s offerings, including copious alcohol and illicit drugs. During many of his visits, Greene had little contact with Cubans, and the idea for Our Man in Havana originated, Hull reveals, in 1944, when a Brazilian film director asked Greene for a film outline and Greene decided to write a Secret Service comedy based on his own wartime observations. Although he did not draw on Cuban politics to represent duplicity and bungling among agents and politicians, Hull asserts that the novel reflected Cold War paranoia and proved prescient in its foreshadowing of the Cuban missile crisis.
A biography notable for its deep research.Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64313-018-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
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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