Controversial and enigmatic, the tragic trajectory of Scott-Heron’s life and career is expertly examined in this testament...
The first full-length biography of the legendary poet/musician famous for his socially conscious lyrics.
A revered figure of both hip-hop and the counterculture, Gil Scott-Heron (1949-2011) was an artist who defied easy classification. Born in Chicago but raised predominately in the small town of Jackson, Tennessee, Scott-Heron experienced firsthand the hypocrisy of segregation and the blues’ “pathos and gut-wrenching emotional honesty,” which would provide him with a rhythm to which to set his evocative lyrics. International Business Times managing editor Baram, who knew his subject during his life, claims that Scott-Heron’s unique style “would emphasize certain words on certain beats, anticipating by a decade the revolution of hip-hop.” Though indebted to blues, his two major influences were Langston Hughes and John Coltrane. Scott-Heron had always considered himself a writer who used music as a way to perform his poetry, and it was Coltrane’s vision and drive that inspired Scott-Heron to focus on his writing. While at Lincoln University, Scott-Heron transformed from a somewhat reserved though passionate observer to an outspoken advocate of social justice. His music reflected this change in the narratives he sang of ghetto life, such as “The Bottle,” as well his bitter critique of American culture and power, “Winter in America.” The polemical “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” would define his career, though Scott-Heron often harangued its misinterpretation, despite licensing the song to Nike. Scott-Heron sought to raise awareness of and legitimize the black experience in America, only to witness the malaise and apathy of the late 1970s erode the progressive spirit that inspired him. He continued to record, but without longtime friend and collaborator Brian Jackson, his sales and critical reception waned. Retreating into a severe cocaine addiction, resulting in several arrests and jail sentences, Scott-Heron made a final recording in 2010 before dying in 2011.
Controversial and enigmatic, the tragic trajectory of Scott-Heron’s life and career is expertly examined in this testament to one of the last great radical artists.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-1250012784
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Sept. 7, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2014
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
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