A sturdy foundation of research and musical knowledge (and love) underlies this inspiring and wrenching account of a man who...
A guided tour through the life and work of Robert Schumann (1810-1956), a musical genius who viewed the sublime before a decline into a syphilitic madness.
Chernaik (Mab’s Daughters, 1991, etc.), who has taught at Columbia, Tufts, and elsewhere, has clearly devoted years of research to this lush life. Although she asserts in the introduction that she is aiming her work at “the general reader,” there are many places—especially in her analyses of individual works—where general readers will require some fairly sophisticated understandings of music. That caveat aside, Chernaik rewards those who do journey through these pages with insights and conclusions that make the reading experience both enjoyable and educative. She teaches us a lot about Schumann’s world and life, including details about his boyhood and his early love for Clara Wieck (the gifted pianist whom he would later marry), whose father’s angry opposition to their relationship courses throughout the early sections. (They had to go to court to obtain legal permission to marry.) Throughout, the author shows us a complicated composer. Fond of drink and of women, he had difficulty settling down; in later sections, we see his inability to conduct less-than-gifted musicians during a stint in Düsseldorf. Chernaik also chronicles his friendships with numerous other musical luminaries and legends, including Chopin, Mendelssohn, and Brahms. Brahms also developed a crush on the older Clara Schumann, but nothing ensued. The author escorts us through Schumann’s most noteworthy works, and we see his frustration about not being able to compose a successful opera. She lets us know which works are still performed, and in agonizing detail, she rehearses Schumann’s descent into darkness in a chapter aptly titled, “The Mind Stripped Bare.”
A sturdy foundation of research and musical knowledge (and love) underlies this inspiring and wrenching account of a man who pursued, captured, and lost.Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-451-49446-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
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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