Somehow it's not surprising to see Cactus Ed (Hayduke Lives!, 1990, etc.) roar back into view, returned from his last resting place under a rock in a lost desert canyon, to fire invective and inspiration at one and all. Petersen, a longtime Abbey friend, has pulled together a goodly bit of something for everyone in this selection from the extensive journals kept by the writer until his death in 1989 (the last journal is numbered 20). Expected are the powerful environmental exhortations, the religion-bashing, the bilious rants against politicos, urbanism, and eastern critics—not that they are any the less wondrous for that. Nor has Petersen, much to his credit, shielded Abbey from his occasional forays into what could at best be called small-mindedness; some might consider his writings on immigration and population matters plain old bigoted nonsense, even racist nastiness. But these pages also contain Abbey's sometimes fascinating takes on art, music, and writing, on life and death, and, revealingly, glimpses into his domestic affairs, which seemed to always be on the boil. (His fifth wife referred to him as ``a damned difficult man.'') Given much airtime, and beveling the writer's hard-edged reputation, is the love Abbey confesses for his five children, although how that translated into deed is another matter undiscussed. But the old reprobate will be best remembered for his deft evocations of the desert Southwest, a land he saw badly abused during his lifetime, a land he tried to protect. Abbey deserves a special place on the long list of American rabble-rousers like Tom Paine and Bill Haywood—as he would no doubt proudly, if cantankerously, agree. (Photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 2, 1994
ISBN: 0-316-00415-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
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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