A disturbing and poetic biography of a talented but massively flawed artist.
A provocative account of the passionate but stormy relationship between a Canadian runaway named Suzanne Mallouk and acclaimed New York artist Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988).
In 1980, Mallouk left a dysfunctional home in Canada for New York. With its bold and brashly inventive art scene, the city seemed the perfect place for a girl who wore paper dresses, hid heroin in her beehive hairdo and believed that she “had seen God” in Iggy Pop. Not long after she arrived, she met Basquiat at a dive bar on the Lower East Side. Basquiat immediately moved into Mallouk’s apartment, where he spent his days drawing, masturbating or snorting cocaine. At night, he would often go alone to clubs to pick up boys or girls and disappear with them for days at a time. Despite the unfaithfulness and his drug habit—which Mallouk shared for a time—she still supported the painter, loving him even after he infected her with the pelvic inflammatory disease that would leave her infertile. Basquiat became her addiction. When New York galleries and hipsters like Debbie Harry and Andy Warhol began to discover Basquiat’s “jazz on canvas” paintings, Basquiat would spend his wealth indiscriminately, buying Armani suits only to ruin them with paint and renting limousines so he could throw $100 bills to bums in the street. Fame only made him even more erratic. Mallouk held on, fighting for him with other women, including, most famously, Madonna. Yet in the end, her love proved no match for Basquiat’s addiction to heroin. Not only would the drug destroy their relationship, but also the painter himself. With short, episodic chapters, Clement (Prayers for the Stolen, 2014, etc.) delivers real insight into the life of the brilliant artist as well as the glittering—but ultimately chaotic—world that consumed him.
A disturbing and poetic biography of a talented but massively flawed artist.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-0553419917
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2014
PROFILES
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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