More nuanced and broader in scope than its provocative title suggests.
A frank exploration of men’s sexuality in the context of a memoir.
The central theme of this sharp debut is Thomas’ notion of “crotch thinking,” a form of toxic masculinity he defines as “sexually driven actions that cripple private lives in ways subtle enough to escape detection and display.” In the first two chapters, Thomas effectively connects personal coming-of-age tales with repressed societal mores of the post–WWII era, a valuable historical reminder, especially for readers of subsequent generations. Retrospectively, by the end of the book, he is able to see how his decisions and behaviors affected loved ones, including three wives and three children. He asserts that much of the domestic conflict throughout his life stemmed from a failure to understand his own motivations, his partners’ needs, and his children’s coping mechanisms. The title of the book thus moves beyond the obvious phallic reference and expands to include a construction metaphor, that is, the building of a satisfying career, personal life, and physical home, complete with false starts, unexpected complications, unforeseen costs, and modified plans. In addition to a primary focus on personal and family relations, the book addresses a wide array of other topics, including the pressures and temptations of academia, the exhilaration and trappings of social mobility, and the tragedy of substance abuse, just to name a few. Thomas writes clearly and precisely, no surprise given his career as a professor of communication. His choice to employ the present tense lends a sense of immediacy to the action despite the past-gazing framework of the memoir genre. He closes with a poem in free verse written for his third wife, a synthesis of everything that has come before regarding the challenges and rewards of romantic partnerships. Furthermore, by means of a thoughtful introduction and epilogue, the author situates his story amid current debates about appropriate male behavior via the #MeToo Movement and a whole myriad of contentious cultural issues surrounding sex.
More nuanced and broader in scope than its provocative title suggests.Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5320-5001-5
Page Count: 144
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Nov. 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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