Very dry, with a twist.
A memoir from a writer who doubles as a comedian.
Though Hodgman has been a bestselling author with his books of “fake facts” (That Is All, 2011, etc.) and has written weekly for the New York Times Magazine, his renown is less literary or journalistic than multimedia, in which everything pretty much cross-promotes everything else. Many fans know him mainly as a correspondent for the Daily Show, which resulted from his books, or his podcast that also builds on his demographic reach and extends it. He has perhaps been most widely seen through his Apple campaign, in which he portrayed the stodgier PC to the hipper computer devices. Having exhausted his fake facts through his earlier books, Hodgman turns to the feeling of being a white man in his 40s, a Yale graduate with a wife who has long been with him and two children he refuses to name to avoid feeding their egos. He reveals to readers, “the central conflict of my life and this book…is this: I OWN TWO SUMMER HOMES.” One is in Massachusetts, bequeathed by his family, and the other is in Maine. Little wonder that a friend once described his work as “white privilege comedy,” though the author actually came to his privilege late. He grew up in a middle-class household and scuffled through a freelancing life and a stint as a literary agent. Hodgman’s comedy is more deadpan than laugh-out-loud funny, aimed at a too-hip-to-chuckle readership for whom this might be metacomedy, in which the very notion of trying to be humorous is the big joke. The author senses an affinity with “Maine Humor,” which elicits “a kind of low inner chuckling, so dry and so deep inside you that you may not realize it is happening.” Though Hodgman explores the landscape of his area of Massachusetts, the title refers to Maine, where he struggles with critters and their waste, ordering propane, and getting along with the locals when you’re “from away.”
Very dry, with a twist.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2480-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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