A book—and a life—unlike any other in rock.
This selectively revealing, insightful memoir casts the cerebral Monkee as a spiritual seeker and self-deprecating visionary.
Popular culture has barely revealed the tip of the iceberg that is Nesmith. The author has a droll, ironic sense of humor, which has helped him connect with like-minded spirits and which readers should find engaging. He’s also an eccentric who describes the aftermath of Monkeedom as “the detritus of a collective dream we were all waking from, each in our own room, and each afflicted with our own case of Celebrity Psychosis informing us about the furniture in that room.” This “Celebrity Psychosis” ultimately figures more heavily in the book than the Monkees do, a demon that haunted him for decades after that 1960s fluke of fame. As much as he resented those who treated him as a puppet or a “pariah…pummeled by opprobrium and ridicule and reviled among my peers,” he eventually came to consider his Monkees experience “a gift, an odd gift to be sure but with a deep message for me that I am still parsing and for which I am never less than thankful.” As for the rest of his fascinating life, Nesmith was raised in Dallas by a single mother, a devout Christian Scientist who became wealthy as the inventor of Liquid Paper. If he didn’t invent country rock, he was there at the beginning, and he did invent the music video and had the vision for what would become MTV. More recently, the author has been involved with virtual reality and received a patent “for the embedding of real time video into a virtual environment.” Along the way, he was influenced by both hippie mystics and a Christian Science teacher, and he bonded with Jack Nicholson, Timothy Leary, Douglas Adams, and John Lennon. Nesmith doesn’t even bother to mention that Linda Ronstadt enjoyed her breakout hit with his “Different Drum” or that the Monkees have experienced a series of comeback reunions (with and without him).
A book—and a life—unlike any other in rock.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-101-90750-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown Archetype
Review Posted Online: Jan. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
PROFILES
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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