A splendid evocation by an eminent theater critic and philosopher (The Memory of the Body, 1992; Shakespeare Our Contemporary, not reviewed) of what it meant to be alive—sometimes barely—during the tremendous upheavals in Europe caused by the Second World War and the installation of the Communist regime in Poland. Kott, who was born in Poland in 1914 and emigrated to the United States in 1966, follows ``the dictation of my memory and its often intricate meandering'' to tell ``a philosophic tale'' of a time when ``history ha[d] broken loose from its mooring.'' He warns us, in effect, that not all of this narrative is reliable when, after describing a scene with a naked woman in a shower, he admits that ``the scene in the shower with Maria—the water was actually ice-cold—never took place.'' But even if some of the events described didn't take place (and we don't know that they didn't), the book is faithful to a deeper emotional truth. It recounts Kott's struggles as a Jew baptized a Catholic by his father, who ``felt that otherwise there would be no future among Poles''; his efforts to gain religious certainty, which took him for some months into a Dominican monastery; his experiences of the German invasion and then the partition of Poland, when he faced death by starvation or execution on several occasions; his life as a trader selling stockings, sugar, dollars, and gold because ``when death is cheap, food is expensive''; and his membership in the Communist Party, of whose record ``I could scarcely claim ignorance.'' Of that time, he writes, ``I have great difficulty in recognizing myself in those first two years after the war and still more trouble judging myself....I was enchanted with myself...and I remember that enchantment more than our arrogance, more than my own arrogance.'' The Communists were, he says, sure of history, as though it belonged to them. His wife never shared this view, and he was eventually disillusioned with Communism, broke with the party, and successfully reached the United States. Writing sometimes in sharp dramatic episodes, sometimes in an autobiographical stream of consciousness, Kott shows an unerring sense of the telling detail that imprints a scene in the memory. A riveting book.
Pub Date: April 13, 1994
ISBN: 0-300-05276-6
Page Count: 291
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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