A meticulously researched, lucidly presented, but oddly undramatic life of English literature’s elusive icon. Bardolaters hoping for more speculation about the Dark Lady’s identity or adventurous hypotheses of the “missing years” before London will get a refreshing cold shower from this up-to-date, strictly factual life. Veteran British biographer Honan (professor emeritus of English at the University of Leeds; Jane Austen, 1988, etc.) pitches in with Shakespearean studies’ slow work to overturn the romantic tide of mythologizing, garbled oral tradition, and basic errors surrounding the poet ever since Aubrey’s gossipy anecdotography in his Restoration-era Brief Lives. With the current accumulation of unearthed Elizabethan documents, Honan’s work has a solid footing in the era. Mapping out Shakespeare’s post-Reformation Stratford, the author analyzes both his father’s business and civic affairs, his family’s ties to recusant Midlands Catholics, and his mother’s and wife’s personalities—at least as far as can be inferred from official documents such as wills. Honan also goes into detail about a grammar school education (and how it would have formed the basis of Shakespeare’s tutelage) before he suggests that Will left to become something like a teacher-cum-actor in Lancashire (if “William Shakeshafte,” in the employ of Alexander de Hoghton, is indeed the Bard). Picking up his trail in London, Honan’s treatment of Shakespeare’s career in the tumultuous Elizabethan theater is grounded in documentary evidence wherever possible, with suppositions about Shakespeare’s attitudes to his fellow actors and contemporary tastes (such as for child actors) always carefully qualified. By the end, although Honan is impartial about the dogmatic conflicts of Shakespeare’s times, he does not approach the final question of Shakespeare’s personal religious convictions—as Aubrey noted, he was accused of having “died a papist.” Still, this life objectively scrutinizes the public individual rather than the inner man. Synthesizing current scholarship, Honan is as likely to quote from official documents, from church records and business papers, or from law court testimonies, as from Shakespeare’s works for his portrait. (b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-19-811792-2
Page Count: 460
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
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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