The chronology is often difficult to follow, but the author spins a dizzying, exhilarating tale of deception, duplicity and...
The absorbing and often bewildering story of an imposter and thief, “a convicted fabulist who attempted again and again to impose the freaks of his imagination on the world around him.”
Expanding on his 2001 New Yorker article, Samuels follows the trail of James Hogue, a talented long-distance runner born in 1959 and raised in a working-class neighborhood in Kansas City, Kan. Despite being perceived as having a discipline problem, Hogue was recruited in 1977 to run at the University of Wyoming. The next decade of his life story is riddled with holes, long blank spaces and calculated distortions—the life of a drifter constantly seeking a new identity. On March 30, 1988, a detective investigated Hogue’s self-storage unit in St. George, Utah, and found a wide variety of stolen items. More than a decade later—after Hogue had been arrested multiple times for theft and fraud—Samuels would tour his house in Telluride, Colo., and discover countless other items stolen from friends, neighbors and acquaintances. “His goal went beyond simple theft,” writes the author. “He was aiming to assemble a new self out of the bits and pieces of other people’s lives.” The idea of creating a new self took on a yet another dimension when Hogue, at the age of 29, decided to start anew by forging an application to Princeton University. Under the identity of Alexi Indris-Santana, a self-educated ranch-hand and outstanding long-distance runner from the Southwest, Hogue was accepted to the class of 1992, but deferred his enrollment for a year while, unknown to Princeton officials, he served a prison sentence in Utah. Once on campus, the reputation of “Sexy Alexi” grew as he regaled professors and fellow students with fabricated stories of travel and adventure. A coincidental run-in with a girl who recognized him from high school brought a quick end to his elaborate ruse, and Hogue was sentenced to five months in jail. After his release, he disappeared once again, surfacing in the late-’90s in Telluride, where he would be arrested once again. In addition to a probing examination of the motivations of a unique charlatan, Samuels offers pointed sociological commentary on such diverse topics as lying, the flawed college-admissions process and the single-minded dedication of long-distance runners.
The chronology is often difficult to follow, but the author spins a dizzying, exhilarating tale of deception, duplicity and the search for personal identity.Pub Date: March 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-59558-188-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
