A well-paced, thoughtful examination of a singular corpus of work that influenced film portrayals of violence in subsequent...
A generous biography of Oscar-winning actor Lee Marvin (1924–1987), best known for his roles in The Dirty Dozen and Point Blank.
Epstein, journalist and frequent writer on Hollywood, considers Marvin—who often played supporting roles as henchmen, soldiers and other characters in Westerns—through a prism of aggression. With ancestors that included Robert E. Lee, George Washington and Ross Marvin (a member of the Robert Peary Arctic expedition), the author proposes that Marvin inherited “the characteristic of the violence-prone male,” which manifested as a bristling spirit often besotted with problems, what is now known as PTSD and alcoholism—all of which Marvin channeled through villains who allowed him to go beyond the range of the acceptable in real life. Epstein recounts how tension at home and frequent expulsions from school eventually led Marvin to enlist as a Marine in World War II and to turn toward the stage, Hollywood and TV in the ensuing years. The author effectively chronicles the actor’s long path from breaking out of niche roles to wider acclaim. Though he does not refrain from including a handful of coarser anecdotes about the actor’s behavior, along with trials in his romantic life, Epstein balances such moments with commentary on Marvin’s kindness, talent and professionalism. Remarks from interviews conducted with Marvin’s longtime agent, Meyer Mishkin, and with Marvin’s first wife, Betty Marvin, especially illuminate the man who “etch[ed] interesting portraits of humanity’s dark side." Epstein’s admiration for his subject is clear yet never too heavy-handed.
A well-paced, thoughtful examination of a singular corpus of work that influenced film portrayals of violence in subsequent decades.Pub Date: Feb. 19, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-9361-8240-4
Page Count: 344
Publisher: Schaffner Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2012
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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