Richardson (The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, a memoir, 1999), once head of Christie’s US operations and now a contributor to...
Engaging essays about an odd mix of artists, writers, tycoons, trendsetters, and con guys from the worlds of literature and art.
Richardson, noted author of the ongoing three-volume Picasso life (A Life of Picasso, Vol. II: 1907–1917, 1996, etc.), has taken time off from that work to bring us some lighter but equally mesmerizing mini-biographies. His 28 delightfully gossipy essays are also extremely insightful, taking us behind the scenes in the lives of the famous, if not always the rich and famous. These are articles about people the author has known, or would like to have known, intrigued by their genius or quirkiness. And readers will be, too. Richardson’s flawless style, incisive wit, and extensive knowledge make the volume a pleasure. Openings are colorful: “Most people who had dealings with Salvador Dalí’s Russian wife, Gala, would agree that to know her was to loathe her.” “Those cultivated American playboys of the 1920s who drew upon sizable trust funds to support their forays into the avant-garde and lavish bohemian lifestyle tended to end sadly or badly.” Although it helps if you’re already familiar with the cast of characters—like Dr. Albert Barnes of the Barnes Museum in Merion, Pennsylvania, whom Richardson says had an “acute case of paranoia”; Lucian Freud, the youngest of Sigmund’s three sons, who set his art school on fire by smoking at night; or Pablito Picasso, the grandson of Pablo who committed suicide by swallowing a bottle of bleach—the author provides just enough history and background to fill in readers who may be newcomers. Ten pages or so on average, these crisply written pieces focus on the compelling idiosyncrasies of each subject, whetting the appetite and impelling readers to move on to full-length biographies.
Richardson (The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, a memoir, 1999), once head of Christie’s US operations and now a contributor to Vanity Fair, the New Yorker, etc., proves again that he’s one of our foremost biographers.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2001
ISBN: 0-679-42490-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2001
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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