It appears to be kiss-and-tell season on Jewish American male novelists; Philip Roth got his last fall, and now Saul Bellow gets his. Wasserman writes without either sentiment or bitterness about the man she devotedly represented for 25 years and who then left her for literary agent provocateur Andrew Wylie (a.k.a. the Jackal). This lack of emotional direction leaves readers a bit confused as to what she wants us to make of the whole thing. In her introduction, Wasserman writes of the ``extra privilege'' of being connected with ``a man of genius, of high art and moral vision, an original thinker,'' and defends him against the familiar charges of misogyny and womanizing. Yet the first episode she relates is how Bellow the noted author turned his eye on her, a young assistant to his agent at Russell & Volkening, selected her to be the first reader of Humboldt's Gift, came to her apartment to discuss it over dinner, and bedded her (a disastrous experience after which, Wasserman assures us, they became the best of platonic friends). And every succeeding incident seems to highlight some petty, mean, selfish act by Bellow. He invited her to visit him in Spain, only to inform her on her arrival that he was leaving the next day, and asked her to cash her travelers' checks for him because he needed money. When his mother-in-law became extremely ill in Romania, Bellow accompanied his wife to see her, though, Wasserman flatly states, ``it was definitely not Saul's style, rushing off like that to be a support to someone.'' She put up with his insensitivity and wisely managed his literary career because that is what nurturing agents do for their simpering author-children. But Wasserman doesn't have much flair for writing, and this spotty look at a 25-year relationship just leaves one wondering where the pleasure was in knowing Saul Bellow.
Pub Date: June 23, 1997
ISBN: 0-88064-177-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1997
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
