Italian aviator and novelist del Giudice (Lines of Light, 1988) poetically exalts the mystery and the mortal balance of flight in this slender but affecting volume of essays. Comprising personal recollections set amid stories of heroism and death in WW II and after, del Giudice's transcendent writings belie the book's prosaic title. Following the account of his first solo flight (``You would place first takeoff alongside first lovemaking, for the intensity of the two is identical,'' he muses), he writes a curious dreamlike episode of two ghostly pilots on a deserted airstrip reflecting over their desperate maneuvers in the last six minutes of their doomed flight through an icy cloud. He ponders the transition from his childhood imaginings of himself as an airplane to the adult flier: ``As an airplane, I belonged to the century of the switch to things . . . a century which has solidified fantasies into objects.'' An essay titled ``Reaching Dew Point'' relates a scary episode—recounted in the most meditative fashion—of the author's flying into an immense cloud and completely losing his bearings. Torn between using the objective, emotionless jargon of the pilot in asking for help and calling out, ``Treviso radar, I do not want to die,'' he gives in to protocol, admitting, however, ``Away from flight . . . in the domain of everything else, you would have detested such a use of words as a way of hiding behind `objectivity' and `putting on a brave front.' '' Also here, strikingly reminiscent of a more recent tragedy, is a recreation of the last minutes of a 1980 flight of an Italian passenger jet that mysteriously blew up, and of its reconstruction after being fished from the sea. Fittingly, del Giudice's final essay has him flying along the route taken by Antoine de Saint- ExupÇry on the morning before his plane disappeared somewhere off Corsica in 1944. A beautifully contemplative, lyrically soaring collection of essays for the earthbound flier.
Pub Date: May 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-15-100269-X
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1997
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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