Another big Lenny B. bio, jam-packed with accomplishment and angst. This is not a terrible book, and there are occasional passages of nice insight. Ultimately, however, the limitations that biographer Secrest admits at the outset prove to be too much for her. She is not a music historian, her previous subjects mostly having been figures from architecture and the visual arts (Frank Lloyd Wright, 1992, etc.), and her self-professed inability to evaluate Bernstein as composer exacerbates the inherent difficulties of writing his life so soon after his death. ``Various family members, close friends, and colleagues'' refused to talk to her because the Bernstein estate was contracted to another biographer (presumably Humphrey Burton, author of Leonard Bernstein, p. 260); for the same reason, she did not have access to the ``vast Bernstein archives.'' There were, of course, still plenty of folks who would talk (and talk and talk) to her about the maestro, and they had a lot to say, on every now-familiar subject from L.B.'s ambivalent sexuality to his podium manners, his business acumen, and his skills as father and teacher. If it were not for the thematic and chronological connective passages that display Secrest's skill as a biographer, the book could be called Reminiscences on Bernstein. Predictably, not all of the lengthy, sometimes rambling, quotations are of equal merit; all are self- interested and some don't make sense. We hear much about Bernstein's conflicts—conducting vs. composing, his attraction to men vs. women—but in the absence of an overview of his creative legacy (which simply may not be possible at this early date), the reader winds up feeling merely exhausted by Lenny's energy level. Another book for the growing shelf from which some Maynard Solomon or musical Walter Jackson Bate will have to winnow when the time comes to write a critical biography rather than the Bernstein story. (100 b&w photos) (First printing of 35,000)
Pub Date: Nov. 10, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-40731-6
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1994
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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