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THIS BRIEF TRAGEDY

UNRAVELING THE TODD-DICKINSON SCANDAL

Walsh, novelist (The Man Who Buried Jesus, 1989) and literary detective (Into My Own: The English Years of Robert Frost, 1988, etc.), now brings his impressive speculative powers to bear on the scandals surrounding the closing years of Emily Dickinson's life. The critical year was 1883: Emily's beloved eight-year-old nephew died; 70-year-old Judge Otis Lord, whom Emily hoped to marry, suffered a fatal stroke; failing health confined her to her room; she lost hope of publishing her poems; and her brother, Austin, entered a mÇnage Ö trois with Mabel Todd and her husband, David (who later suffered a nervous collapse from their irregular lifestyle). According to Walsh, Emily, influenced by Romeo and Heathcliff, then committed suicide by strychnine ingestion. Susan Dickinson, the poet's sister-in-law, discouraged posthumous publication of Emily's poems to avoid attracting attention to the sordid living arrangements of the mÇnage, but Vinnie, the poet's sister, asked Mabel to copy them, with Mabel's name ultimately joining Colonel Higginson's as editor and friend of the poet, even though she had never been allowed in Emily's presence. In 1930, when Emily's poetry was rediscovered, Mabel, as the only survivor, become the source of biographical information, which she altered to establish her own reputation as expert and confidante. Her daughter Millicent published Ancestor's Brocade: The Literary Debut of Emily Dickinson, permanently establishing Mabel as a literary heroine and Susan Dickinson and Vinnie, who had challenged Mabel's claim to a piece of Emily's property, as villains. It is difficult to say how much of this story is true. Mostly, it has the quality of a fascinating piece of historical fiction—in part because of Walsh's emphasis on the sordid (Austin was allowed ``a place in the family bed,'' and David was allegedly allowed to watch Austin and Mabel making love on Sunday evenings), and his neglect of precise citations, referring to other biographers without naming them or the works he claims to be refuting.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1991

ISBN: 0-8021-1119-X

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Grove

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1991

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INTO THE WILD

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.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)

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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WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR

A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...

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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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