Notwithstanding frank discussion of his homosexuality and HIV- positive status, the composer-lyricist of Hello, Dolly!, Mame, and La Cage aux Folles delivers a memoir as old-fashioned as his shows: exuberant, stagestruck, over-gushy at times, and unabashedly self- infatuated. The opening chapters are best, as 17-year-old Jerry, untrained but gifted, encouraged by his doting mother (who died before he made it to Broadway) and family acquaintance Frank Loesser, heads out from Jersey City to devote his life to showtunes: theater studies at the University of Miami; playing piano at supper clubs (listening hard to Mabel Mercer); scoring with little revues—and with his Broadway debut, Milk and Honey, featuring a show-stopper for Molly Picon (``What a moment!''). Then Herman wrote four songs in three days on spec for ``monster'' David Merrick—who made him rich and famous from Dolly! but scarred him forever with sadistic mind-games on the road. (Another Dolly! scar: a plagiarism lawsuit that Herman settled so as not to kill the movie deal.) Mame—except for the pain of Lucille Ball's movie-version singing—and La Cage were Herman's greatest collaborative joys. In between came disappointments (Dear World and Mack and Mabel—which became a London hit 20 years later), bitterness about being dismissed by the Sondheim-admiring theater clique, and years of depression. And along the way there's a late-blooming love life (including a long relationship ended by AIDS), houses to decorate, and loyal pals like Carol Channing and Angela Lansbury. With generous excerpts from song lyrics, mini-tributes to a slew of stars, and a heap of that-number-brought-down-the-house anecdotes: a glossily upbeat rendition of ``I Am What I Am,'' chiefly but not exclusively for fans. (photos)
Pub Date: Nov. 13, 1996
ISBN: 1-55611-502-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Donald Fine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1996
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
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