Goodheart writes with disarming gentleness throughout, but his memoir is a forlorn reminder that the Great Books do not...
A literary critic reflects on his career in the elite circles of the academy, his tenuous connection to Jewish identity, and the vicissitudes of age.
Although Goodheart (Humanities/Brandeis) has little that is strikingly unique to say about his childhood (in a politically progressive family during the 1930s and ’40s) or his initiation into the intellectual scene of the 1950s, his account treats the usual themes—the gradual erosion of his identification with Judaism, as well as the drama of the “golden age” of Columbia University—with humor and some sensitivity. His memoir is most successful, in fact, as an account of a vanished academic world, in which bright young men could step almost effortlessly into more or less prestigious sinecures, and students, campus staff, and wives seemed to exist only to serve the scholars in their pursuit of their calling. He depicts the imperiousness of the prominent Formalist critics and the ironies of his own “conversion” from his family’s socialist idealism to the decidedly apolitical critical approaches then in vogue with some sensitivity. At the same time, casual references to relocating his (unnamed) wife as he climbed the career ladder from job to job are disconcerting, hinting at but never exploring the human cost of the professorial privilege that he enjoyed. A similar mix of self-consciousness and evasion pervades his discussion of a critic’s political obligations. “My mind swung between the poles of ‘on the one hand’ and ‘on the other,’ ” Goodheart confides, but the effect is less existential doubt than waffling. The philosophical ruminations that follow, pondering “the perils of no convictions” have the texture of a magazine article stretched to chapter length, offering broad generalizations about “people on the left,” conservatives, and postmodernists—but little analysis of specific positions or arguments. The last two chapters mourn the indignities of his own late middle age and his mother’s old age: physical deterioration, alienation, and loneliness.
Goodheart writes with disarming gentleness throughout, but his memoir is a forlorn reminder that the Great Books do not necessarily provide moral compasses or solace for the human condition.Pub Date: May 29, 2001
ISBN: 1-58567-146-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2001
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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