A warm and well-researched yet ultimately inessential appreciation of one of Hollywood’s largely forgotten stars.
Spoto spotlights Wright.
Acclaimed Hollywood biographer Spoto (The Redgraves: A Family Epic, 2012, etc.), who has penned books about Joan Crawford, Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor, and others, returns with an affectionate portrait of actress Teresa Wright (1918-2005), best known for her roles in Shadow of a Doubt, The Little Foxes, The Best Years of Our Lives, and Mrs. Miniver, for which Wright won an Academy Award for best supporting actress. Unfortunately for Spoto, after that run of films in the early 1940s, Wright’s star faded precipitously as the result of a highly publicized contract dispute with studio head Samuel Goldwyn, and her career afterward consisted of well-regarded—but hardly iconic—work on stage, screen, and lesser parts in lesser films. It’s hardly the stuff of high drama, and the author’s account of Wright’s personal life similarly fails to enthrall, as a relatively civilized divorce from her first husband and a sometimes-prickly relationship with her second, playwright Robert Anderson, mark the dramatic peaks of this material. Wright was a wonderfully bracing actress in her clutch of classic early roles. She was fresh-faced, winsome, emotionally direct and fiercely intelligent, and it’s a shame her talent was undervalued by the studio brass. However, her story lacks a compelling arc, and her cultural impact does not justify the in-depth descriptions of her homes, friendships, children’s lives, and sundry other personal details diligently recorded here. Spoto writes of his long personal friendship with Wright, and his admiration and respect register clearly in his characteristically literate, engaging, and authoritative prose. She does come across as a wonderful person to know, but as a biographical subject, she leaves readers wanting.
A warm and well-researched yet ultimately inessential appreciation of one of Hollywood’s largely forgotten stars.Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62846-045-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2016
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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