Despite having conducted dozens of interviews with those who knew Olivier, Spoto (author of biographies of Hitchcock, Tennessee Williams, and others) offers little important new material—and few fresh insights—in this long, uninspired biography. Aside from lots of sexual tattle, much of it unsupported by sources, and an unconvincing minority opinion on Vivien Leigh's mental troubles, most everything here has been covered before (and, often, better) elsewhere. Like Anthony Holden (Laurence Olivier, 1988), Spoto takes a largely unfriendly view of Sir Larry—seen throughout as primarily ambitious, envious, ungrateful (to Gielgud especially), and ``emotionally inaccessible.'' Also like Holden, Spoto emphasizes Olivier's guilt-ridden nature; unlike Holden, though, Spoto links it to a struggle with bisexuality, supposedly evidenced by a ten- year affair with Danny Kaye (cf. Michael Korda's recent roman Ö clef) and quasi-sexual attachments to Noel Coward, Kenneth Tynan, and others. As for women, there were brief encounters (Greer Garson, Sarah Miles, Claire Bloom, etc.) and three unhappy marriages; in Spoto's iffy version, Joan Plowright is an uncaring opportunist, Vivien Leigh a self-indulgent sensualist (rather than a manic-depressive). And his interpretation of Olivier's amazing career and art is only slightly more persuasive: the stage and film work, the rise and fall at the National Theatre, all receive conscientious attention—but Spoto's attempts at analyzing the Olivier genius largely slide into psychobabble and platitude: ``This awareness of inadequacy was suffused by a mysterious gift, enabling him to pass the single beam of his own humanity through the prism of a role—and the emerging, manifold ray reached the countless different lives of his spectators.'' Sure to be read for the gossip, and worth skimming for curious bits of interview material, but—with its flat delivery and spotty documentation—an only so-so addition to the crowded Olivier reference room. (More than 75 halftones—not seen.)
Pub Date: March 11, 1992
ISBN: 0-06-018315-2
Page Count: 600
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1992
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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