The rise and fall of a one-book wonder, told by the Pulitzer Prizewinning Washington Post literary critic. If Exley's raucous ``fictional memoir'' of failure, fame, and football, A Fan's Notes, is a cult book, then Yardley (Ring: A Biography of Ring Lardner, 1977) has been a steadfast apostle. Since its publication in 1968, he has promoted it in his newspaper writing and written an introduction to the Modern Library edition (to be published simultaneously with this biography). He was also a distant friend to Exley, ``the most elusive and mysterious of men,'' a charming and exasperating ne'er-do-well, sponger, and barstool-propping man of letters. Despite this relationship, Yardley proves tough and objective in re-creating Exley's life, which differs little in substance from A Fan's Notes. Exley (192992) was the feckless younger son of the local football hero of Watertown, a small upstate New York burg. This might have been the son's only claim to fame had he not written a book that Yardley ranks alongside Invisible Man and The Adventures of Augie March for its evocation of a young man's disaffection with the American Way. A Fan's Notes apart, the biographic trail is scant in the early years, but Yardley connects Exley's departure from mainstream life not only to his father's early death and his failed romance as an adolescent with a WASP debutante, but also to a car accident that ended his own mediocre football career and presumably gave him a taste of mortality. As much as he is a fan of Exley's debut, he dismisses as ``honorable failures'' his later Pages from a Cold Island and Last Notes from Home, which follow the self-mythologizing, vagabond contours of Fitzgeraldian romanticism and Hemingwayesque machismo in chronicling Exley's alcoholism and failed marriages. Misfit adds a dark, factual foundation to Exley's one lasting book. (photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Aug. 28, 1997
ISBN: 0-679-43949-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
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
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