As with many ploddingly obese biographies, there is a thin, sprightly work here aching to be set free. Angus Wilson was one of the last gasps of breath in the British novel's slow, asymptotic death. In novels such as Anglo- Saxon Attitudes and The Middle Age of Mrs. Eliot, he combined the waspishness of Evelyn Waugh with the social commentary of E.M. Forster, adding a dash of baroque Firbankian campiness for good measure. Though he was one of England's first openly gay writers, his work is more concerned with the foibles and fallibilities of English society than specifically homosexual themes. A friend of the novelist's, Drabble seems concerned with returning him to his proper place in English literature. Like many of his characters, Wilson was a colorful personality, effortlessly erudite, a great talker, but his life was usually unremarkable: He lectured and went on long holidays. And Drabble (The Gates of Ivory, 1992, etc.) feels obliged to record it all. Right to the brink of parody, list follows list as she notes seemingly every party, conference, and dinner Wilson ever attended; she even throws in the occasional menu, as well. And why not detail Wilson's slightest jaunt—from a day trip to London to a grand Indian tour? At times it's more like reading an engagement calendar than a biography. The writing tends to be bloodless, enervated, but is redeemed somewhat by her novelist's insight into Wilson's psychology. She also writes with professional understanding of Wilson's money troubles, the ceaseless Faustian necessity of teaching, lecturing, attending conferences, reviewing books, all in order to stay afloat. Such is the sad, ironic state of literature these days, that when Wilson died in 1991, much honored, even knighted, he was practically penniless, and many of his books were out of print. Perhaps this biography, in its lumbering, cumbersome way, might bring a few of these elegant, streamlined, ever inventive works back to the bookstores.
Pub Date: May 27, 1996
ISBN: 0-312-14276-5
Page Count: 740
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1996
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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