The lesson in this surprisingly heartfelt memoir by an iconic American tattoo artist is that the man is not always the brand.
Hardy’s memoir/cautionary tale about art, commerce, skin and ink, written with the assistance of San Francisco Chronicle music writer Selvin (co-author: Peppermint Twist: The Mob, the Music, and the Most Famous Dance Club of the ’60s, 2012, etc.).
In the relatively closed world of tattoo artists, Hardy was a groundbreaking figure, tattooing sailors and longshoremen in states where the artistry was illegal. Sadly, most people know Hardy’s name from the ubiquitous brand foisted upon a specific demographic of young men by French fashionista Christian Audigier. (See comedy duo Garfunkel and Oates’ “This Party Took a Turn for the Douche” and “#124 Hating People Who Wear Ed Hardy” from Stuff White People Like.) It is an unfortunate cross to bear since much of Hardy’s story details cross-cultural experiences that are unique and fascinating. After studying at the San Francisco Art Institute, Hardy fell in with other famous artists like “Sailor Jerry” Collins. Inspired by 19th-century Japanese printmaking, Hardy traveled to Japan in 1973 to become one of the first Western artists to study with Japanese masters. Hardy’s work changed from trite tattoos of anchors on rough-hewn sailors to the dramatic images of skulls, devils and samurai that worked their way into California biker culture and eventually onto rock stars and masters of industry. What limits Hardy’s memoir is his plainspoken, slow-but-sure storytelling. While the culture of tattoo art is clearly bold and sometimes risky, Hardy admits he would have become an academic if he hadn’t plied his trade in this different medium. A coda about Audigier admits Hardy’s inner conflict about the deal as he tells a friend, “This guy is at ground zero of everything that is wrong with contemporary culture,” before ultimately taking the deal. “I just wanted to get paid and to be left alone,” he says. Be careful what you wish for.
The lesson in this surprisingly heartfelt memoir by an iconic American tattoo artist is that the man is not always the brand.Pub Date: June 18, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-250-00882-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2013
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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