Engaging, warm chronological memoir of Cary Grant, assembled from his own words and those of friends and fellow actors by Nelson, who represented Grant on the lecture circuit during his last years. This is a big, solid Grant biography that towers above recent books that show the actor ingloriously as a neurotic tightwad and bisexual. Nelson met Grant while arranging for his ``Evenings with Cary Grant''—Grant made 36 such unrehearsed appearances, speaking intimately to 1,000 to 3,000 listeners and answering questions for about two hours a show, to standing ovations. While Nelson pastes together her hundreds of quotations with quiet skill, she sometimes gets things wrong, as with Grant spending heavily to track down Plaza-owner Conrad Hilton to complain about getting only one half of an English muffin—a story that makes Hilton seem cheap. In fact, Grant got three halves and explained to Hilton that he was losing good will by not offering the fourth. Grant, born in Bristol, England, as Archie Leach, left school at 13 to go on the road as a dancer-tumbler-stilt-walker-pantomimist with the Pender troupe, skills that stayed with him for life and that brought him to America where he became a Coney Island stilt-walker, then a success in Broadway musicals. His first film was a bit in Singapore Sue, but it wasn't until 1937's The Awful Truth (directed by Frank Capra) that his gift for suave farce and physical comedy set him up as Hollywood's greatest farceur. By then he'd married and been divorced by Virginia Cherrill, Chaplin's blind girl in City Lights. Among the more moving episodes here is Grant's romance with young Phyllis Brooks, whose mother dampened any wedding bells. All speak of Grant's grace, taste, generosity, great wit and style, and the smashing quotes from his ``Evenings with...'' prove every word. Forget the other books, this is it. Superb. (Sixty-eight b&w photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Oct. 16, 1991
ISBN: 0-688-10610-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1991
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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