In this fatiguing chronicle of a gifted musician’s work, quality never equals quantity.
The renowned critic compiles more than four decades of writing about his favorite subject, who he has covered in such books as Invisible Republic (1997) and Like a Rolling Stone (2005).
The collection begins promisingly with Marcus’s most notorious single piece about Dylan, the caustic Rolling Stone critique of the two-LP set Self Portrait (1970). But this selection of album, concert and book reviews, features, liner notes, columns and academic papers is swiftly sabotaged by the author’s humorlessness, myopia and simple bad judgment. As ever, the writer relies on torturously scholastic readings of lyrics, odd and sometimes irrelevant sources and analogs and precious little musical explication to pick apart his thorny and highly inconsistent subject’s work. It doesn’t help that this book surveys nearly 30 years (1970–1997) of generally substandard writing and performing by Dylan. All too often, Marcus falls back on familiar tropes. He regularly flogs 1920s icons like Rabbit Brown, Dock Boggs and the other denizens of Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music to make his points, and he hashes over Dylan’s 1965–66 collaborations with The Band—first essayed in Mystery Train (1975)—once too often. The author’s pieces about Dylan’s inspired latter-day work is muddled and uncomprehending. He perplexingly writes off the renascent album Oh Mercy (1989) as a “producer’s album,” yet lauds Time Out of Mind (1997), also helmed by producer Daniel Lanois. At times, his contorted attempts to make an unusual connection are simply wrong-headed. His fantastical 2000 piece relating “Desolation Row” to an 1888 canvas by artist James Ensor is as insupportable as it is egregious. In one review, Marcus assails some writing in Dylan’s memoir Chronicles Volume 1 (2004), saying, “That line calls attention to itself.” The same could be said for almost the entire corpus of the author’s work about Dylan.
In this fatiguing chronicle of a gifted musician’s work, quality never equals quantity.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-58648-831-4
Page Count: 496
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
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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