Knowledgeable and occasionally insightful but also undisciplined and self-indulgent.
W.H. Auden’s famous poem receives an impressionistic, idiosyncratic examination from fellow poet, mystery writer, and jack-of-all–literary trades Sansom (English/Univ. of Warwick; December Stories I, 2018, etc.).
Don’t expect conventional literary criticism or an exegesis of the poem’s historical and autobiographical underpinnings in this rambling, fitfully stimulating work. Structured as a stanza-by-stanza exploration, the text is in fact extremely scattershot; Sansom takes 100 pages to get through Auden’s first stanza, leaving 200 breathless pages for the next eight. Indeed, the text generally has a breathless, tossed-off air, though the author tells us he has been trying to write about Auden for 25 years. The plethora of literary extracts scattered throughout, by Auden and others, might testify to Sansom’s deep knowledge of literature—or might just signal an author substituting quotation for inspiration. He certainly knows a lot about Auden, and there are flashes of genuine perceptiveness: “that weird combination in [Auden’s] work of mental toughness and piercing insights, and also a deep, sweet sentimentality.” (Sansom takes a more jaundiced tone about Auden’s sentimental tendencies when he gets to the poem’s most famous line, “We must love one another or die,” and dismisses it with a brisk, “No. Just, no.”) Sansom never conveys the sense of personal connection that presumably led him to grapple with Auden and his work. Instead, we get uninteresting personal trivia, such as the author’s feelings of inferiority to real Auden scholars like John Fuller and Edward Mendelson or the fact that he, like Auden, reads a lot of crime fiction. The latter remark is followed by the vague claim that “it’s hard not to imagine Auden as some sort of detective…one of those professional amateurs beloved of crime writers.” Whether a reader finds this sort of aperçu charming or not is a good forecast of what their overall reaction to the book will be.
Knowledgeable and occasionally insightful but also undisciplined and self-indulgent.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-298459-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
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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