A pale addition to the rich literature of madness.
Jensen’s artlessly earnest memoir chronicles his descent into delusional paranoia upon the publication of his first novel (Shiva 3000, 1999).
A 29-year-old librarian in Canada at the time, the author was committed to a psych ward for several weeks after a failed suicide attempt (sleeping pills, but not enough to do the job). Jensen was convinced there was a marksman just outside the hospital window who was going to shoot him. It probably served him right, he believed, because he was about to cause “the end of the world” with the imminent publication by a large American publisher of his first novel, a SF thriller about the Hindu god Shiva. During his time at the hospital, the patient avoided contact with other people, lest he contaminate them. “I can’t put anyone else at risk,” he explained to a nurse. “It would be immoral of me.” Faithful wife Michelle visited constantly and seemed to want him to get well, yet she returned Jensen to the hospital in the middle of the night when his delusions didn’t go away. The author actually tried (unsuccessfully) to withdraw his novel from publication, fearing lawsuits by world governments. Several chapters of back-story delineate some possible causes of Jensen’s breakdown: stress, lack of sleep, anti-malarial drugs, “years of overcast skies,” a family history of suicide or simply fear of success. Living in the Mennonite community of Fraser Valley, where the sign “Prepare to Meet God” greeted him every day, didn’t help. The author even suggests that his malaise might have had roots in troubling books such as Silence of the Lambs. Whatever the causes, this was definitely the hard way for a writer to learn that his own book “would not set the world on fire.” Jensen’s account of his incarceration achieves an empathetic irony, but he might have done better to write another novel and put these details to greater, dynamic effect.
A pale addition to the rich literature of madness.Pub Date: April 18, 2005
ISBN: 0-7867-1562-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2005
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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