Although the book ends abruptly with saddened consideration of Garcia’s 1995 demise (without discussing the Dead’s influence...
What a Long, Strange Trip It Was: a comprehensive, thoughtful anthology depicting the phenomena and foibles encompassing the 30-odd year “unending tour” of the Grateful Dead.
Husband-and-wife editors Dodd (The Grateful Dead and Deadheads, not reviewed) and Spaulding shrewdly cast a wide net in addressing the Deadhead phenomenon, and the plurality of perspectives and information helps even neophytes understand the band’s tenacity in outlasting the Haight-Ashbury days, their development as an underground phenomenon, and their dedication to musical experimentation (as reflected in everything from idiosyncratic side projects to their obsession with live sound and encouragement of tape trading among their hardcore fans). Though these pieces do not dispel a conception of this Deadhead subculture as solipsistic and clubbish, there’s much fine writing here nonetheless. Key pieces include Tom Wolfe’s account of an early “Kool-Aid Acid Test,” essays on the Dead’s beginnings by pioneering pop journalist Ralph Gleason, and accounts of the 1970-era period (when it became evident the band had evolved beyond being a mere California rock group into something more unpredictably fluid) by Steve Silberman, George W.S. Trow, and novelist Ed McClanahan. While contributors like Silberman, Mary Eisenhart, and Blair Jackson are connected within the Dead organization (and, to their credit, find insiders’ insights), the rock critical establishment is represented by short, lively pieces from Robert Christgau and Richard Meltzer, as well as writers not associated with the Dead’s milieu (like screenwriter Charlie Haas and fiction writer Lee Abbott). Substantial interviews with key Dead members Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, and lyricist Robert Hunter also appear. While many pieces hew to depictions of the Dead-related lifestyle as an elaborate traveling utopia, fan-magazine editor Jackson portrays darker qualities in his 1990 depiction of a scene consumed by both overindulgence and undercover drug warriors looking for easy prosecutions.
Although the book ends abruptly with saddened consideration of Garcia’s 1995 demise (without discussing the Dead’s influence upon current cultish, touring “jam bands”), it remains a satisfying and thought-provoking compendium of countercultural commentary.Pub Date: July 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-19-512470-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2000
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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