An ill-digested mix, although not without its felicities.
Here’s an urban legend that turns out to be true: the pathologist who autopsied Albert Einstein kept his brain, and magazine journalist Paterniti spent a nutty couple of weeks with him, ferrying it to California.
Dr. Thomas Harvey was a pathologist at Princeton Hospital who had a slight acquaintance with the world-renowned physicist; when he performed the autopsy on Einstein after his death in 1955, Harvey removed the famed brain and just kept it. Nearly 45 years later, he decided to show it to Evelyn Einstein, the great man’s granddaughter. The only problem was that she lived in San Francisco, while Harvey was in New Jersey. Enter Paterniti, who realized the journalistic potential—the existential potential!—of a road trip cross-country with the brain of the most famous scientist of the 20th century. The tone of the book is established right away: Paterniti is a bit of a smartass, a would-be Hunter Thompson in search of a guru of gonzo, and what better guru than the man who saved Einstein’s brain? Throughout their journey, Paterniti keeps shifting his focus from the historical and cultural significance of Einstein, a topic on which he is quite intelligent, to larger, more ponderous meanderings on time, space, love, and loss. The journey is not really enriched by a chapter-long visit to William Burroughs, a sort of obligatory but unnecessary bow to the Beats. Along the way, Paterniti juggles his complex emotions at being separated from his girlfriend and their dog, his increasingly mixed feelings toward Harvey, who seems to treat him as a glorified chauffeur rather than an accomplice in some delicious stunt, and his growing unease amidst the detritus of American road culture. Harvey is inscrutable, which doesn’t help the story but rings true. The result is a readable but sloppy mixture of cultural and scientific history, road book, and rather obvious personal memoir.
An ill-digested mix, although not without its felicities.Pub Date: July 18, 2000
ISBN: 0-385-33300-5
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Part tabloid-style tearjerker, part sophisticated corporate exposÇ, by a former People magazine crime writer and bestselling author (The Strawberry Statement, 1969). On May 14, 1988, just outside Carrollton, Ky., a drunk-driving ne'er-do-well named Larry Mahoney slammed his Toyota pickup into a schoolbus carrying 63 children. The impact set the bus's fuel tank on fire. Twenty-seven died and 16 were hospitalized with burns. Only two families opted not to settle with Mahoney's insurers and the bus manufacturers. The Fairs, parents of Shannon, 14 when she died, and the Nunnallees, parents of Patty, who was 10, hired John P. Coale, Esq., the self-styled ``master of disaster'' who had represented the city of Bhopal in the Union Carbide gas leak. Coale charged the Ford Motor Company (and Sheller-Globe, which assembled the schoolbus for Ford) with ``consciously disregarding'' the danger they were creating by placing an unshielded fuel tank next to the front door of a bus that had ``flammable seats, inadequate emergency exits and a too-narrow aisle.'' Kunen's lingering account of the crash and its aftermath makes for excruciating reading, especially when he abandons taste for cheap effect. For example, describing a videotape of Shannon and her friends forming a cheerleader's pyramid, he writes: ``Was that pyramid, in that room, in that house, in that moment, on a sort of raft, borne on a river of time toward a bus crash waiting downstream?'' Kunen is on firmer ground when he describes, in meticulous detail, Ford's long history of subverting national safety standards in the name of cost- effectiveness. The book's strongest section focuses on Ford's tawdry behavior during the trial (arguing, among other things, that a schoolbus is a ``truck,'' not a ``bus,'' and therefore not subject to the safety standards of passenger vehicles). You'll want to avert your eyes as Kunen recreates the accident in all its blood and tears, but hang on for some impressive corporate muckraking. (8 pages of b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-671-70533-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
An entertaining autopsy of a failed NBC TV drama/comedy. Don't worry if you never saw or even heard of a show called ``Smoldering Lust''—or ``A Black Tie Affair,'' as it was retitled. The program lasted only a few episodes. Though it had potential, with $9 million spent on production, the talent of award-winning writer/creator Jay Tarses (``The Carol Burnett Show,'' ``The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd'') and actress Kate Capshaw (also Mrs. Steven Spielberg), and themes like adultery and murder, the project quickly faced trouble. Shaky network support, quirky writing, and a confusing title soon gave way to larger problems: a seven-month delay before airing, bad test results from a sample audience, disputes with the network's top brass, a debut in a bad time slot on Saturday night at 10 p.m. over Memorial Day weekend, and many negative reviews. While he delivers a lot of bad news, former Life writer Muse makes it interesting, providing colorful chapters on everything from shopping for the characters' upscale wardrobes, building and decorating the sets, and scoring the show to basics like scripting, casting, and shooting. He populates the scene behind the scenes with comic episodes and likable, three- dimensional characters who really seem to love what they do, and he avoids easy stereotypes. For instance, Tarses is a seasoned and philosophical TV veteran with high standards and a desire to nurture young talent; Capshaw is an artist, not a pampered star; and the censor at Standards and Practices is laid back and accommodating. Muse remains fairly sympathetic to the doomed show until the book's final pages, when, with hindsight, the author becomes the expert. ``Might the series have succeeded if all thirteen episodes had aired, in a hot spot on a good night, and under the original title? No way...someone probably should have prevented this expensive disaster from happening.'' Overall, a small tale well told.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-201-62223-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Addison-Wesley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
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