Blistering but repetitious life of Thomas that leaves no part of him unwhipped; by the coauthor of 1986's Caitlin: Life with Dylan Thomas, which also was an oven-blast against the poet, directed by his widow. When Tremlett finished working with Caitlin Thomas on her autobiography, she suggested he wait five years and then do Dylan. All the biographers so far had got Dylan wrong, she said, and she'd help Tremlett get Dylan right. In her words, ``Dylan was a shit.'' Going by the facts assembled here, that estimate gives Thomas fair weight—and is added to by the agonized characterizations awarded him by the friends who knew him from youth onward. Thomas was a child prodigy about words, with a widely read scholar-father who detested pubic education and a mother who doted on the boy's every whimper. This coddling apparently warped him forever: a piece of Thomas's character was missing utterly. Obsessed with poetry and being ``A Poet,'' he begged, borrowed, and stole relentlessly all his life, was dunned endlessly by creditors, despite earning great sums for radio and movie scripts and especially his Collected Poems. Says Tremlett: ``It is not an attractive picture that we have of this man, for all his great gifts, because his inner selfishness was so overwhelming and his belief in his own genius so obsessive...no matter what the cost to his family.'' As Thomas explained it, ``I'm a very happy sort of bird, and I don't care much.'' But he seems to have been happy only when drinking and parading his organ voice through pubs; his evenings often ended in lost fistfights with his wife, who would box his ears and pull out his curls. Thomas was, it seems, a poor lover as well, childish and unsatisfying, and his legendary drinking capacity all a myth. Thomas sizzles and fries, straightens up to knock out a classic. (Sixteen pages of photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-312-06957-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1991
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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