Solid overall, as we have come to expect from Wall, though some readers might prefer Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugarmen’s...
In which the Lizard King is revealed to have been human after all.
The dead–Jim Morrison industry has fallen off somewhat in recent years, but there’s still lively interest in the Doors on the part of music fans around the world—and readers, too. British rock writer/biographer Wall (Black Sabbath: Symptom of the Universe, 2015, etc.) does a good service by removing the spotlight from Morrison and putting it on the other three members of the legendary 1960s rock group. For instance, he writes, the little-heard-from drummer John Densmore, had problems with the front guy, “becoming ever more frustrated at the increasingly over-indulgent antics of the only guy in the band who couldn’t actually play an instrument.” The author credits guitarist Robbie Krieger with being the chief driving force behind the creation of the band’s catchiest tunes, giving Krieger and keyboardist Ray Manzarek full props for sonic ability and hipness made all the more hip by their lack of Morrison’s showy self-destruction. The usual figures, including the mystical Indian of Morrison myth, bow in, but Wall gives greater attention to the players who shaped the Doors’ legacy—the engineers and producers and background figures who never get enough attention. Though the author too often writes like someone’s superannuated uncle who never quite got over Woodstock (“Ray, who made the whole thing up, man. Kept the train on the tracks”), he tells a good story, and his attention to both the musical and business parts of the equation is a welcome addition to the usual fawning over Morrison’s Adonis-like qualities. Furthermore, the author has talked to the right people, at least those of them left alive, from producer and guiding light Jac Holzman to scene-maker Pamela Des Barres, who only faintly protests that Jim wasn’t anything but straight.
Solid overall, as we have come to expect from Wall, though some readers might prefer Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugarmen’s canonical No One Here Gets Out Alive (1980) for sheer rock-’n’-roll esprit.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-61373-408-7
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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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