More than a footnote to the rise and fall of one of the last great rock bands.
When did the Clash quit being “the only band that matters”?
This fascinating book faces a challenge: documenting the final years of the British band that its record label had promoted with that slogan. It’s a period the band has disavowed and that critics have generally reviled, resulting in one album released after this version of the band had effectively disbanded and which the Clash has omitted from its authorized anthology. The best that Andersen (co-author: Dance of Days: Two Decades of Punk in the Nation's Capital, 2009) and Heibutzki (Unfinished Business-The Life and Times of Danny Gatton, 2003) can say about the album, “Cut the Crap,” recorded with only two original members, is that it was “indeed unique, if also sometimes a bit of a car wreck.” As much as the Clash as a band, the authors focus on the Clash as an idea, an interchange of rebellious fervor between artist and audience and perhaps more timely than ever with the ascent of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. The authors risk oversimplifying what led the Clash to this juncture: a split between Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, whose more commercial-sounding hits were at odds with the band’s activist urgency. There’s also a bigger tension at work: how rock can possibly fight the system from within the system—recording for a huge conglomerate—and how it can become popular enough to wield significant influence without succumbing to the temptations of rock stardom. Following a large festival payday, Strummer and the band sacked Jones (after their drummer had already been sidelined by heroin addiction) and recruited a new lineup under the old name. However, they could never agree on what the new Clash was supposed to be, and Strummer and his manager ultimately found themselves at irreparable odds. The band may no longer have mattered, but its legacy mattered to the authors, who make it matter to the readers.
More than a footnote to the rise and fall of one of the last great rock bands.Pub Date: July 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-61775-293-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Akashic
Review Posted Online: April 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
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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