Besides appealing to fans, the book ably captures the lost milieu of independent rock, which Nirvana’s moment irretrievably...
You-are-there narrative of Nirvana’s rise, focused on the trio’s comrades at the dawn of Alternative Nation.
Soulsby (Dark Slivers: Seeing Nirvana in the Shards of Incesticide, 2012) builds his second book concerning Nirvana’s brief run and long shadow through the recollections of Nirvana’s fellow musicians, most (though not all) of whom remained obscure. This is in line with the most positive aspect of how Nirvana’s success transformed the regional American musical underground: "Nirvana never felt it was above the many bands they befriended; they always felt they were part of the community who tell this tale rather than of the celebrity world they joined.” Formed four years prior to 1991’s chart-topping “Nevermind,” the band’s core was the fragile, artistic Kurt Cobain and the less-enigmatic rocker Krist Novoselic. Benefitting from the communal, low-budget vibe in the Pacific Northwest music scene, their nascent band quickly evolved into an efficient, hard-driven touring machine, alongside other avatars of grunge like Tad and Mudhoney. As one musician observed, early Nirvana was “definitely still grunge but with better venues comes better sound and all things better.” Naturally, Cobain’s spirit hangs over the storytelling; he’s remembered as withdrawn and clearly overwhelmed by health issues and controlled substances but also for kindness and humor. In an improbable moment, as they were taken under Sonic Youth’s wing and added powerhouse drummer Dave Grohl, all the elements aligned for a major cultural shift. As “Nevermind” broke big, the band “brought the communal spirit of the underground to whatever strange land was opening up for them,” engaging social causes and booking confrontational bands as opening acts. As Soulsby notes, “Nirvana saw fame as valuable only if it stood for something.” Yet the rockers’ reflections become increasingly poignant as the band’s denouement approaches.
Besides appealing to fans, the book ably captures the lost milieu of independent rock, which Nirvana’s moment irretrievably transformed.Pub Date: March 31, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-06152-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
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