An erudite work resting on prodigious research and experience and deep affection and admiration.
A celebrated conductor of baroque music debuts with an examination of Bach’s compositions, descriptions of various works and some inferences about the genius who created them.
Although Gardiner celebrates Bach’s accomplishments through this dense, demanding but rewarding work, he reminds readers continually that the composer was no saint—“a thoroughly imperfect being,” he calls him near the end. But the author’s focus is not so much on the man but on the music. Gardiner does explain the various geographical moves Bach made in his career, his duties in the various venues where he worked, the amazing demands from his employers—and from his own work ethic; the author writes about Bach’s coevals, his marriages, and his children and extended family. But all is in service to the principal item on his agenda: the music. Gardiner is an unabashed Bach fan, praising the composer throughout, even comparing his music to the voice of God. However, he recognizes human weaknesses, as well—for example, his contentious relationship with authority. Gardiner takes us through the major types of works—the cantatas (including some interesting passages about the Coffee Cantata), the St. John Passion and St. Matthew Passion, the motets and the Mass in B Minor. Some of his detailed analysis will leave behind his general readers but will surely animate musicians and musicologists. Although he occasionally alludes to extramusical worlds (mentioning Uncle Remus stories, Philip Pullman, Shakespeare, cake-baking and a variety of famous painters), Gardiner’s textual world is principally a musical one. He also examines Bach’s Lutheranism and how he revealed his religious ideas in the music—and in the interactions between the music and the words. He speculates that near the end of Bach’s life, the composer seemed to express some doubts about life beyond the grave.
An erudite work resting on prodigious research and experience and deep affection and admiration.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-375-41529-6
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2013
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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