Kaufman’s fans will enjoy it, but so will Hecht’s.
An amusing enough trifle for those who believe we really need another book about Andy Kaufman.
The year was 1978, or maybe 1979. Although she didn’t consider herself a journalist, let alone a celebrity profiler, short-story writer Hecht (Do the Windows Open?, 1997) was asked by an editor at Harper’s to do a piece on comedian Kaufman, who was all the rage at the time. Instead of a magazine-sized article, she ended up with a 150-page narrative (published here for the first time) detailing her yearlong attempt to get the man to sit down and do an “official” interview. Along the way, she endured elaborate jokes and pranks orchestrated by Kaufman (abetted by his ever-present sidekick Bob Zmuda), got into absurd arguments with him, ate meals with his family on Long Island, had long talks with his mother, listened to him obsess over sex and food, goaded him to take better care of himself, observed him prevaricate his way through interviews with other magazine writers, and eventually became one of Kaufman’s friends . . . sort of. The official interview—a two-hour Q&A over mediocre vegetarian food at Soho’s famous Spring Street Natural restaurant—didn’t actually happen until Hecht had been chasing Kaufman for a year. But by this time, the journey itself had become the destination, and Hecht had already learned about as much as she was going to from this consistently enigmatic prankster and absurdist. Written mostly in dialogue (peppered with funny and often trenchant asides from Hecht), the book paints a very specific portrait of Kaufman—a performer who treated his audience alternately with generosity or contempt—while leaving intact some essential mysteries about his personality and character. Just when Kaufman seems to have revealed some basic truth about himself—for example, the late admission that all he ever wanted to be in life was a “children’s entertainer”—he says or does something to contradict himself. The question posed by the title is, mercifully, left unanswered by Hecht, who quietly reveals herself as the perfect foil to Kaufman’s antics: centered, skeptical, opinionated, but not without humor or compassion.
Kaufman’s fans will enjoy it, but so will Hecht’s.Pub Date: April 17, 2001
ISBN: 0-375-50457-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2001
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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