No matter how sleazy you might have heard the music industry is, this memoir suggests that it was worse.
The music industry is long overdue for its #MeToo explosion, and this memoir seems ready to light the fuse.
As the first female executive for Atlantic Records in A&R—artists and repertoire, the talent scouts who sign the recording acts—Carvello describes in dirty detail a “culture of toxic masculinity” that pervaded the company in particular and the industry as a whole. She was initiated into the industry as an assistant and secretary to the legendary Ahmet Ertegun, who hired her as something of a political favor, though she didn’t really know how to type or take dictation. Though the label’s founder enjoyed a reputation as something of a cosmopolitan sophisticate, she exposes him as “the guy who played with himself under his desk while dictating letters to his secretary” and “who verbally, physically, and sexually mistreated me.” Yet he was also her lifelong mentor, and she claims that she revered him even as he disgusted her—even after his violence toward her resulted in “a hairline fracture in my forearm.” By today’s standards, Ertegun would have been found guilty of sexual harassment and criminal assault, yet at the time, a lawyer told her “that if I sued for harassment, I’d lose my job. Worse than that, I knew I’d be blackballed from the entire business.” So Carvello went along to get along, swearing as much as the man-eating sharks that surrounded her, sleeping with some of them, and marrying one who physically abused her (and to whom she gave a black eye). She dishes unsavory details about industry giants such as Doug Morris, Irving Azoff, and Tommy Mottola (though not with the sexual accusations she levels at Ertegun), and she shows how she suffered from a reputation as “a troublemaker.” Yet her own attempts at revenge and her mixing of business with sexual pleasure suggest that she was willing to play the game by the same rules as the rest of them.
No matter how sleazy you might have heard the music industry is, this memoir suggests that it was worse.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-912777-91-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
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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