A perceptive, though dark, portrait.
An unsparing look at the abrasive performer.
Cultural critic Siegel (Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob, 2008, etc.), winner of the National Magazine Award for Reviews and Criticism, contributes to the Jewish Lives series with a biography of the misogynist, disdainful Julius Henry Marx, nicknamed Groucho because of his “sour, bitter nature.” Siegel argues that Groucho’s stage persona was consistent with his real personality: “Groucho embodies the spirit of nihilism,” the author asserts, “yet his biographers and various commentators always try to impart some positive or affirmative quality to him.” He finds the sources of that nihilism in his early life: the middle son of five brothers, he had a “marginal position in his parents’ household.” The most intellectual of his siblings, he wanted to become a physician. Instead, his mother yanked him out of grade school and sent him out to work to earn money for the impoverished family. His father was weak-willed, his mother domineering, and the young boy, “wounded by his mother,” became a performer “whose aggression toward women is at the forefront of every film.” Siegel analyzes—and sometimes overanalyzes—the Marx Brothers’ movies, identifying instances of Groucho’s “abuse and invective” to show how his routines “on stage and screen were seamless with the rhythms of his temperament as he passed through everyday life.” In keeping with this series’ focus on Jewish identity, Siegel examines Marx’s connection to his cultural heritage. He concludes that his comedy “has deep roots in Jewish forms of irony and social dissent,” disdain for authority, and sense of displacement and ostracism that resulted in “explicit contempt for other people.” The man who emerges from these pages is difficult, unlikable, and brash, and his humor coarse. Siegel identifies Lenny Bruce as his heir rather than Woody Allen, with whom he is sometimes compared.
A perceptive, though dark, portrait.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-300-17445-8
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
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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