A lucid, unvarnished biography of novelist Kingsley Amis (who died in 1995), father of Martin and one of Britain’s famously outsize literary personalities. Jacobs, a London-based journalist for more than 30 years, timed his research perfectly: When he began interviewing Kingsley Amis for this book, the septuagenarian was still in good health, his spiky, contrarian wit undimmed. Over the course of two and a half years, the two men met frequently in Amis’s favorite pubs, where the author regaled the journalist with bizarre anecdotes, caustic opinions, and bawdy rhymes. Amis seemed to enjoy recounting his florid past, and’seen through the amber glaze of many a single-malt Macallan—it gained clarity and sharpness. Jacobs observed, however, that Amis’s physical life had become sharply constricted, his body heavy and leaden, almost monstrously childlike. Yet Amis was always a man of contrasts, his emotional neediness and hypochondria offset still by fierce, dismissive intellect. One of the most prolific and plainspoken authors of his generation, Amis wrote 24 novels—including his famous, award-winning debut, Lucky Jim—and more than a dozen collections of poetry, short stories, and criticism. There was nothing in his past to suggest it: Amis was the only son of a business clerk, and his ascent from the perfect obscurity of lower-middle-class London was largely self-willed. But he never quite fit in with his literary peers. Not only was he famously outspoken, he also wrote popular books—an aesthetic decision rooted in his own sense of egalitarianism. As Jacobs explains, Amis did not believe in books —you had to read another book to understand.— Nor does Jacobs himself, who has written an evenhanded and refreshingly direct profile of the man: the soldier, the husband, the father, the boozer, the adulterer, and, above all, the novelist. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: June 16, 1998
ISBN: 0-312-18602-9
Page Count: 392
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1998
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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