``I don't think there is a definitive portrait of Balanchine,'' says longtime New York City Ballet administrator Betty Cage herein. ``Everybody has a different view, a different perspective...all true in certain ways and all lacking in certain ways.'' This collection of more than 75 such perspectives from friends and associates ultimately tells us much more about the contributors than about Balanchine-but is nonetheless entertaining and often riveting. Mason (editor of Ballet Review) does put his finger on why talking about Balanchine reveals so much about the speakers: ``I have never known so many people so eager to talk about a man. Balanchine was clearly a dominant figure to all of them: talking about him explained themselves, relived their careers, made sense of their lives, assimilated the past for the future.'' Throughout, this leads to a seriousness and solemnity in interviews from such widely varied personalities as Alexandra Danilova, Nureyev, Erick Hawkins, Katherine Dunham, and Darci Kistler. Lincoln Kirstein, quoted in a 1933 letter to a friend after first meeting Balanchine, is full of the urgency of having recognized a genius: ``This will be the most important letter I will ever write you...My pen burns my hand...We have a real chance to have an American ballet within 3 years time...'' Mason deftly lets each distinctive voice come through loud and clear. Here is Edward Villella on discussing the essence of gesture with Balanchine: ``At the beginning of the pas de deux, Apollo and Tersichore touch their fingertips together, and I said, `Jeez, that's really very beautiful.' '' And there are plenty of sidelights into dance history that have nothing to do with Balanchine. The ballerina Tamara Geva (Balanchine's first wife) remembers Isadora Duncan: ``I shall never forget her performance: Wagnerian music, with a symphony orchestra down below in the pit, and up on the stage of the Maryinsky this lady stretched out on the floor. She lay there for a long time while we were all waiting for something to happen.'' A massive (640-page), eloquent effort that provides a valuable oral history of the ballet world. If it doesn't add to our knowledge of Balanchine, it does, most importantly, underscore his extraordinary contribution. As Helgi Tomasson, now director of the San Francisco Ballet poignantly captures the elusiveness of dance as well as of Balanchine's genius: ``the farther we get from his leaving us, the less we will remember.''
Pub Date: May 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-385-26610-3
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1991
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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