An engaging and amiable autobiography by the veteran, Academy Awardwinning character actor. Though they labor in the shadows of stars, supporting players are frequently more talented than their top-billed brethren, whose fame and fortune are so often the gift of their looks. Supporting players like Malden have only sheer acting ability going for them. Born Mladen Sekulovich, in 1913, into the Serbian enclave of the dreary mill town of Gary, Ind., Malden seemed destined for a life of hard manual labor. In school he acted frequently, but he had little sense of where or how to take this talent further, so he went to work in the local steel mill. Sensing life slipping by, he eventually visited the Goodman drama school in Chicago. With his small savings, he could only afford one semester's tuition, but he soon earned a scholarship and was on his way. Malden debuted during the Golden Age of American drama, when Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller were at the height of their powers. After he'd struggled for several years in plays that quickly closed, his portrayal of Mitch—on both stage and screen—in A Streetcar Named Desire launched his career of semi-stardom. This was the era of the Group Theater, that dedicated, even cultic, band of performers and directors who changed American acting. While Malden was deeply involved with them, he already, naturally, adhered to many of their precepts—minus their dogma. His comments on his preparation as an actor are some of the most interesting parts of this book. Despite his acting abilities, Malden has no great gift for choosing roles, and beyond a few notable exceptions, such as Patton and On the Waterfront, he has appeared in any number of mediocre movies and TV shows. Still, his is an inspiring story of perseverance and hard work. As autobiographies by second bananas go, this is among the best of the bunch.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-684-84309-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1997
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
