Worshipful, occasionally overenthusiastic, yet engaging and sometimes surprisingly insightful.
The grooving story of the disco sensation, freighted with a goodly amount of cultural analysis.
Gamson (Freaks Talk Back, not reviewed) is so in love with his subject that this biography of 1970s disco superstar Sylvester is in fact more celebration than study, though carefully researched nonetheless and able to unearth the occasional sociological gem. Born in 1947, Sylvester James grew up in a large, churchy black family in South Central Los Angeles, where he loved singing in the gospel choir as much as tottering around in his mother’s heels. In adolescence, when his screaming femininity stopped seeming cute, Sylvester left home and started hanging with the Disquotays, a fierce band of drag queens who could hold their own in fights with the local toughs—he would never again have any desire to dress the way society said a man should. By 1970, Sylvester had migrated to San Francisco and fallen in with the absurdist drag/clown performing troupe the Cockettes. With his gospel-tinged style and oddly effective falsetto, he quickly became one of the group’s star attractions and was the sole high point of their otherwise disastrous 1971 New York shows. Afterward, Sylvester went on his own. His solo career steadily gathered steam, culminated with his smash 1978 disco hit “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real),” then swiftly downshifted with the late ’70s anti-disco backlash. Unlike most stories of supposed one-hit wonders, however, Gamson’s narrative is thoroughly grounded in Sylvester’s work in the San Francisco gay club scene, where he remained a huge sensation well into the 1980s, before dying of AIDS in 1988. Sylvester’s flamboyant diva style is excitingly rendered here, as friends and associates seemingly fall over each other to describe one more fabulous outfit or dramatic entrance, the best being that time Sylvester roller-skated through the streets of South Central in full drag and pigtails.
Worshipful, occasionally overenthusiastic, yet engaging and sometimes surprisingly insightful.Pub Date: March 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-8050-7250-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2005
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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