An informative if scattershot account by Ross (Takes,1983, etc.) of her 40-year romance with New Yorker editor William Shawn. Ross, who joined the staff of the New Yorker in 1945, makes no apologies for her lengthy affair with the long-married Shawn, though she goes to great (and circular) lengths to explain and excuse it. “I couldn’t reconcile myself to being a —mistress.— I didn’t feel like one,” she writes. “Bill told me I was his —wife.— “ The entire affair was conducted with the full knowledge of Shawn’s real wife, Cecille: He and Ross kept an apartment about 12 blocks from where Mrs. Shawn and their children lived. Ross is vague and sparing with the logistics, yet apparently Shawn would usually sleep at home (where he kept a private phone in the bedroom “with a number he gave solely to me”), while taking his meals and spending most evenings with Ross (their apartment’s previous tenant had been Marlene Dietrich). Ross notes “the familiar misery in his face” after doing time en famille; although he —longed for the earthiest and wildest kinds of sexual adventures,— evidently he “never became inured to his guilt.” There’s a dated and doltish innocence in her presentation of this material, a tendency to dote goggle-eyed on Shawn that belies her true wit; Ross, after all, is well known as a tough-minded and persevering writer/reporter. Some passages are nearly incomprehensible, with few or no transitions to prepare or conclude them. Ross, who left the New Yorker with Shawn in 1987, returned in 1993, and compares Tina Brown’s regime favorably with that of her flame. Of historical interest are her recollections of J.D. Salinger and Shawn’s publication of “Zooey” over the objections of his own fiction editors. Both too quirky and too chatty; Ross is at her best when sticking to writers, writing, and Shawn’s editing. (b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: June 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-375-50119-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1998
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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