Sealed for 25 years since his death in 1956, the diaries of the once popular critic and newspaperman only now have been edited from the original manuscript, which is three times longer than the selections brought together here by Mencken scholar Fecher. Though something of an event for Menckenites, the publication of these diaries reveals little that wasn't already known from the famous curmudgeon's voluminous publications. What is new here isn't very pleasant, and even Fecher—a devout Mencken defender—admits the uglier aspects of these less inhibited jottings. Mencken proves to be both a racist and an anti-Semite, as many have long suspected, though not quite as vehement in his prejudices as Fecher suggests in his informative introduction. Written during the Thirties and Forties, the diaries follow Mencken's decline in popularity—temporarily forestalled by the succes of his American Language series—and reflect none of the excitement of his heyday as a critic and editor. By the Thirties, Mencken no longer championed writers such as Dreiser, but in fact found him an "incurable lout," and Sinclair Lewis an alcoholic "psycopath." Despite cameos by a drunken Faulkner, a charming Fitzgerald, a dull T.S. Eliot, and a manic Ezra Pound, the literary celebs in these pages are mostly second-rate and in decline themselves. Mencken hobnobs with politicians, medical men from Johns Hopkins, and journalists, but spends most of his time recording what he ate and drank, as well as the aftereffects, for he was clearly a hypochondriac, recording every heart palpitation and gas bubble. Much of the diary follows the internal affairs of The Baltimore Sun, with which Mencken remained affiliated long after he ceased writing for it, and the publishing house of Alfred Knopf, on whose board Mencken sat. Throughout the war years, Mencken remains true to his isolationist and libertarian principles, reserving his greatest invective for that "mountebank" FDR. Hardly the American Samuel Johnson (as Fecher avers), Mencken isn't even equal to Edmund Wilson, whose own diaries contribute to literary history in a way Mencken's seldom do.
Pub Date: Jan. 15, 1989
ISBN: 039456877X
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1989
BOOK REVIEW
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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