Without a hint of bathos or self-pity, and a pleasure to read for its author’s intelligence, wit, humanity, and conviction.
A remarkable first-person account of surviving cancer on one’s own terms.
Gearin-Tosh (English/Oxford Univ.) received the news that he had incurable multiple myeloma in March 1994 and for the next year kept a journal of his efforts to research his deadly disease, assess his options, and find a benign treatment regimen. This journal, supplemented by numerous letters to and from doctors, colleagues, and friends, form the basis for the first part of Living Proof. He relates how, after consulting a number of doctors in both England and the US, he opts not to undergo the brutal chemotherapy recommended by orthodox medicine. (“If your friend touches chemotherapy, he’s a goner” was the warning passed along by someone who had consulted Dr. Ernst Wynder on his behalf.) His research leads him to examine alternative medicine therapies, and he adopts a program utilizing Chinese breathing exercises, acupuncture, regular coffee enemas, and a stringent diet that relies heavily on raw fruits and vegetables supplemented with vitamins and minerals. Gearin-Tosh’s fiercely intelligent account ends in 1995, but the second section, which he wrote six years later, sets this apart from the usual cancer-survival narrative. Prefaced by tributes from two physicians, it includes the author’s analysis of the situation cancer patients are likely to find themselves in and his advice to them. He argues persuasively against being rushed into treatment by doctors’ survival statistics, advocates active involvement in one’s own therapy, and urges resistance to the notion that personal temperament or instincts have no place or value in cancer treatment. Also included is a lengthy medical case history, wryly titled “The Case of the .005% Survivor,” written by his doctor and directed to physicians, giving extensive details about his treatment. An afterword directs readers to a Web site where Gearin-Tosh’s medical records will be kept up-to-date.
Without a hint of bathos or self-pity, and a pleasure to read for its author’s intelligence, wit, humanity, and conviction.Pub Date: April 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7432-2517-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2002
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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