Scholarly, impassioned and riveting—a dandy corrective to an undervalued legacy and an immersive trip through a vanished era...
The life and career of a protean figure from Hollywood’s early days.
The present obscurity of Victor Fleming (1889–1949) doesn’t reflect the extent of his influence and achievements, suggests Baltimore Sun film critic Sragow (editor: James Agee: Film Writing and Selected Journalism, 2005, etc.). Displaying an early fascination with and facility for things mechanical, the California native occupied himself with automobiles before devoting his energies to photography, which led him to work as a cinematographer and director for MGM. Sragow authoritatively discourses on Fleming’s strengths as a filmmaker, analyzing the director’s knack for conveying the kinetic excitement of what were, after all, moving pictures, his ease with a diverse range of genres and his deft touch with actors. Douglas Fairbanks, Clark Gable, Gary Cooper and Jean Harlow were among those who developed much of their iconic personae through their associations with Fleming. Sragow provides ample evidence that his male stars incorporated the director’s mystique into their own on-screen identities, quoting family members and colleagues who inevitably described Fleming as an uncommonly charismatic man’s man: a sportsman, gentleman and irresistible catnip to the ladies, including lovers Clara Bow and Ingrid Bergman. (He directed Bergman in Joan of Arc, a punishing project and critical flop that may well have lead to his premature death.) Fleming’s most famous accomplishment is his miraculous 1939 double-header. After The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind foundered in early going with their original directors, he stepped in and stewarded two of cinema’s all-time classics to the screen despite impossibly difficult technical demands, studio politics and temperamental talent. The section on these two films alone, filled with backstage gossip and expert insight into the methods of Golden Age studio filmmaking, is worth the price of admission, but the rest of Sragow’s meticulously researched and engrossing history of this largely forgotten great director is a must for any serious movie fan.
Scholarly, impassioned and riveting—a dandy corrective to an undervalued legacy and an immersive trip through a vanished era of popular entertainment.Pub Date: Dec. 9, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-375-40748-2
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2008
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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