One of New Wave’s original “angry young men,” Joe Jackson highlights his journey from Portsmouth, England to the Royal Academy of Music to pop star in this lively musical memoir. Jackson, who emerged in the late ’70s as a contemporary of Elvis Costello and Graham Parker, and went on to score pop success with such songs as “Is She Really Going Out With Him?,” “Steppin’ Out,” “Breaking Us in Two,” “Jumping Jive,” and “I’m the Man,” has proven to be one of rock’s most enigmatic performers. In fact, he’s often been accused of being confrontational and pretentious. The latter trait is evidenced early in A Cure for Gravity, and often slows down the flow of the book, as Jackson eschews the linear autobiographical route for sometimes lengthy digressions into a form of music criticism (on subjects that range from Steely Dan, whom he calls one of his biggest influences, to Beethoven). It’s not that his views aren’t interesting, as he clearly knows his material; it’s that they disrupt what is a sometimes comical, dead-on portrayal of coming of age as a musical outcast. Growing up in a portside town as a young asthmatic, Jackson was gawky and unathletic, a deadly combination that often attracted what he calls the “hardnuts” (bullies who ostracized him for being different). However, by the time he was a teenager, he’d discovered his musical gift, first playing solos in local pubs (despite being underage), then looking for bands to showcase his talents. His tales of the horrible gigs he had to take early on, as in a Greek restaurant where his group backed up a screaming singer and a belly dancer, are often as hilarious as those in The Commitments. Jackson has a remarkable recollection of his days as a struggling musician, and those anecdotes not only entertain, they make Jackson remarkably human, a characteristic not even his fans have always seen. A Cure for Gravity should be required reading for anyone who’s ever attempted to start a band, either for fun or to make it as a professional musician. And even those who’ve only thought about it as a passing fancy will find much delight in this touching musical journey. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-891620-50-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2000
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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