An understated, observant, and earnest memoir from an acclaimed novelist.
The second installment of American novelist Plante’s memoir (Becoming a Londoner, 2013, etc.) of his long love affair with Nikos Stangos (1936-2004), the Greek-born editor of the publishing house Thames and Hudson.
In this elegant follow-up to Becoming a Londoner, the author concentrates on the 1980s, moving among London, Italy, and Tulsa, Oklahoma. Deaths among his gay community from HIV/AIDS were just becoming a creeping, recurring reality in Plante’s diary, which he kept dutifully during his life with Stangos. Since the mid-1960s, the two had cultivated a deep friendship with poet Stephen Spender and his Russian wife, Natasha. They benefitted from Spender’s stellar social connections with artists like David Hockney and moved in a tight artistic circle in London and New York as well as Lucca, Italy, where Plante and Stangos lived together. The worldly Spender (in his 70s) appears here infatuated with a young American student, and their correspondence was strictly kept from his wife by using Plante and Stangos as go-betweens. Plante, in his mid-40s, also battled duel affections—e.g., for his former Turkish lover who lived in New York and died shockingly of AIDS; and successful American artist Jennifer Bartlett, about whom Plante was truly conflicted. Both relationships caused Stangos terrible agonies of jealousy, while Stangos’ flirtation with a young man in his publishing office greatly affected Plante. The most engaging moments in the book chronicle the time when the author shared a house in Tulsa with prickly Australian critic Germaine Greer and they both got jobs teaching at the University of Tulsa. Also entertaining is Plante’s anecdote about when he was asked by acquaintance Philip Roth to accompany him to Israel to research a new novel. Full of questions about Plante’s non-Jewishness and sexuality, Roth may have used Plante as a model for his goyish character in The Counterlife (1986).
An understated, observant, and earnest memoir from an acclaimed novelist.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4088-5480-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Nov. 6, 2015
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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