Leave it to Heller to have a bout with paralysis and death that brims with life and humor. The story of his struggle with Guillain-Barré syndrome—a rare, debilitating polyneuritis—is harmoniously co-written by the author of Catch 22 and the old friend who became his valet, secretary, business manager, and part-time nurse. The inscrutable fears and cosmic injustices in Heller's fiction here become real, but the account of his fall and resurrection, though frightening, is always hopeful, even joyful. The subject is not disease, but the good things in life: friendship, romance, freedom, Chinese food. Along with objective observations of his stubbornly disobedient body, Heller relates his efforts to pitch woo while paralyzed and tells how the disease became an issue at his unfriendly divorce proceedings. Throughout, Heller is witty and wonderful. Once a cheerful gourmand, he is reduced to taking all his meals through a tube. When a nurse offers to pour some champagne through his tube at New Year's, he passes in deference to his unwell body, noting "Besides, I never could abide the taste of any but the best champagne." Another of the frustrations of paralysis is not being able to bite one's fingernails. Vogel—former herring taster, former textiles executive, former sculptor—writes with clarity and humor, if with less stylistic bravado than his novelist buddy. The collaboration—done in alternating chapters, with occasional hilarious cross-interjections—is effective. Among other things, Vogel's candid appreciation of Heller's legendary grumpiness gives dimension to the story. Both authors would have us believe they were simply two men who didn't have any choice. Was Heller courageous in the face of his devastating disease? He notes sardonically that he couldn't have flailed his arms, beat the ground, or put a pistol to his head if he had wanted to—after all, he was paralyzed. Was Vogel selflessly devoted to his longtime buddy? Hell, he didn't have a job anyway, and he got to live in Heller's great apartment, wear Heller's clothes, sign Heller's checks, and even take out Heller's girlfriend. Their literary collaboration is just as fortuitous. Heller is sharply observant and amusing, even in a hospital bed. Vogel is a character, and handy with anecdotes. Beneath its sarcasms, then, an enjoyable, life-affirming account of friendship and courage.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1985
ISBN: 0743247175
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1985
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
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.
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
SEEN & HEARD
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