A beer-sozzled, speed-cranked nail bomb of a book—what everybody’s Saturday night should be like.
Edison’s juicy screed of a memoir is like a kick in the solar plexus: It may hurt like nobody’s business, but at least it wakes you up.
The prototypical nice Jewish boy from the Jersey suburbs with perennially disappointed parents, teenaged Mike loved nothing more than smoking pot and drinking booze, preferably while pursuing other loves like pro wrestling (he wrote and edited a zine called Main Event in the mid-’80s) and punk rock (he worshipped at its altar with his almighty drum set). A short stint at NYU film school didn’t pan out—the Jean Renoir–worshipping snobs sniffed at his downmarket tastes—so Edison spent a few years rocking across New York and Europe with his band, Sharky’s Machine. At home, the freakishly evolved, high-functioning substance abuser paid the bills by doing everything from cranking out a porn novel a week (the money was good, the page lengths set, and dialogue took up a lot of space) to editing and writing at top speed for porn, wrestling and trade magazines. Things slowed down a bit when, after a particularly debauched period touring and drinking his way around Spain, Edison started taking real jobs, realizing to his surprise that “somehow I had turned a three-year coke jag into a marketable skill.” What should have been a dream gig at High Times magazine turned into a nightmare as the hippie-hating punk butted heads with the lazy hippies on staff. While an excellent introduction to the ins-and-outs of magazine publishing, this part of the book loses momentum as Edison devotes too many pages to settling scores with old enemies. Fortunately, it wasn’t long before he was back out in the world, living for the moment.
A beer-sozzled, speed-cranked nail bomb of a book—what everybody’s Saturday night should be like.Pub Date: May 22, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-86547-964-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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