If ever a human life was a palimpsest, it was that of William S. Burroughs. Caveney’s (Shopping in Space, not reviewed) captivated biography begins with the premise that there is no knowing Burroughs without proper understanding of the myths that so insistently grew up around him; in literature, as in agriculture, the weeds say something of the soil. Caveney, a British literary scholar, is an able deconstructionist and fine writer, very much up to the particular biographical challenges presented by his subject. He notes that Burroughs’s forgettable undergraduate years at Harvard —appear to have been spent cultivating the art of invisibility, casting himself as a fugitive from an establishment of which he was a part.” Judiciously quoting Burroughs throughout, the author lingers over the thousand familiar stories about him, seems even to relish them as the primary source material this study requires. While the reader will be occasionally unpersuaded by the kinds of induction upon which Caveney’s analysis depends, the methodology is eminently useful in its discovery of the cultural nerves that Burroughs, wittingly or not, repeatedly struck. Neither is there a shortage of the more local biographical detail—who met whom, and when, and where—to which all chronicles of the Beat movement and its denizens succumb to greater or lesser extent. Caveney, for his part, is copious but not overbearing, expanding his scope to incorporate Burroughs’s influence on figures as disparate as the late rock musician Kurt Cobain, poet John Giorno, and novelist Terry Southern. Mention must here be made of the book’s remarkable graphic design. Its cut-and-paste aesthetic (with text superimposed over art) is a mirror of Burroughs’s own that, rather than distract the reader from the text, quietly reinforces the extent of this legacy, which perhaps has always been less about literature than spectacle, the odd event of seeing life enact itself over and against the words we use to describe it.
Pub Date: June 15, 1998
ISBN: 0-316-13725-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1998
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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