A multivocal treatment well suited to the complex and dappled life of one of America's premier modern poets. Members of Bishop's wide circle of friends from literature and the arts (among them John Ashbery, Robert Giroux, Helen Muchnic, Anne Stevenson, Ned Rorem, and James Laughlin) recall with eloquence the poet's intelligence, her reserve, her anxiety, and her peculiar intensity through the stages and stories of her accomplished and troubled life. Born to a mentally ill mother and a father who died when she was eight months old, Bishop (19111979) spent her early years living with family members in Worcester, Boston, and Great Village, Mass. Recollections by her childhood friends reveal a very intelligent but odd personality—shy, and often embarrassed or pained by common experiences. Several contributors comment, however, on the order, discipline, and companionship she found at the Walnut Hill School between 1927 and '30; there she began to write plays, short stories, book reviews, and poetry for the school's magazine. From her Vassar days, Bishop is remembered for her strong mind, arch wit, sometimes taciturn demeanor, and her talent for writing. With Mary McCarthy and others, she launched the alternative literary magazine Con Spirito, which created a sensation on campus and brought her to the notice of the Ivy League literati of the time, eventually yielding an introduction to poet Marianne Moore. After graduating from college, Bishop traveled to New York, Europe, Key West, and Rio de Janeiro, and through several lesbian love relationships, the most sustained of which with Lota de Macedo Soares. Friends recall these adult years as difficult, sometimes drunken, but also rewarding for Bishop as a person and a poet. After her lover's death in 1967, Bishop's life took shape around a series of teaching appointments at the University of Washington, Harvard, and finally New York University. Although a few of Fountain's (English dept. chairman at Miss Porter's School) and Brazeau's (Parts of a World: Wallace Stevens Remembered, 1983) transitions push too hard, the portrait of the poet this oral biography creates is, finally, absorbing and at times beautiful and graced with artfulness.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-87023-936-8
Page Count: 448
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
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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