An unrelenting, authentic, literary midnight confession.
A sometimes-scandalous poet opens up about herself and her business.
Mary Karr describes writing a memoir as “knocking yourself out with your own fist.” In these short, autobiographical pieces, poet and novelist Addonizio (The Palace of Illusions: Stories, 2014, etc.) knocks herself out over and over, sometimes viciously. The book is filled with her usual jaunty wit, sarcasm, and irreverence. This “Emily Dickinson with a strap-on,” as she calls herself, is ruthlessly honest and writes so well that no matter what she’s excoriating or dissing or musing about becomes immediately fascinating. Her passion for writing is an “irresistible lover” she’s known most of her life; it’s the “monster that controls me.” There are also the lovers she has sought in all the wrong places her whole life—the divorces and many lovers or mere sex partners for a night. Too many had “no heart in their chest cavity.” Many of these pieces are dark and unrelenting in self-flagellation. There’s the drinking (a lot), depression, and a drug-riddled life: “pot, mescaline, acid, Quaaludes, Seconals, coke, heroin, speed,” and others she can’t recall. Addonizio writes fondly of her famous parents. Her sportswriter dad read to her often, and her piece about taking her elderly, ailing, once-a-champion-tennis-player mom, Pauline Betz, to a drug store for a flu shot is tender and loving. Poetry and writing and her daughter, Aya Cash, an accomplished actress, are the true loves in her life. Addonizio has managed to live off her books, grants, prizes, and readings her whole life. Trying to write a third novel to make some money was as painful as “having a baby,” and she gives up. Whether it’s walking around drunk at a poetry conference or looking for a new beau online, the life of this poet is not a pretty picture, but it’s captivating.
An unrelenting, authentic, literary midnight confession.Pub Date: June 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-14-312846-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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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