As the first substantive biography of Hirschfeld, this will be welcomed by art and Broadway lovers alike.
An in-depth biography of America’s “line king” caricaturist.
Born in St. Louis, Al Hirschfeld (1903-2003) began drawing when he was 5 years old and never stopped. Journalist Stern (Gracie Mansion: A Celebration of New York City's Mayoral Residence, 2005, etc.) interviewed Hirschfeld in 1987 for a GQ profile. Over the years, she has conducted extensive interviews with those who knew him—the book is packed with quotations—and had access to personal letters, journals, and scrapbooks, resulting in this much-needed, affectionate, and entertaining book-length profile. In 1912, the Hirschfeld family moved to New York City. Although he traveled around the world throughout his life, NYC was always home. While still in his teens, the young, talented artist began doing caricatures for Broadway posters and ads as well as lobby cards for local movie companies like Goldwyn and the Selznick Corporation. He came to be known as the “line king” for his minimalist black-lines-on-white-paper caricatures of actors and actresses that succinctly captured the looks and personalities of his subjects. He was fast and reliable. His theatrical caricatures—he preferred “character drawings”—became popular, his line “ever more surgical.” Broadway was his milieu, and every actor wanted to be “Hirschfelded.” He worked hard at it; sitting in his barbershop chair, his drawing board in front of him, he worked 7 days per week, 7 hours per day. S.J. Perelman described him as “a remarkable combination of Walt Whitman, Lawrence of Arabia, and Moe, my favorite waiter at Lindy’s.” In 1928, Hirschfeld started working for the New York Times, in 1953, TV Guide, and in 1998 he did a cover for Time. As Stern shows, his married life with three wives was up and down, but for 75 years, he had his dream job.
As the first substantive biography of Hirschfeld, this will be welcomed by art and Broadway lovers alike.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-374-28057-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Sarah Crichton/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
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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