A blathering memoir describing how an odd handful of movies moved and influenced Horrigan (English/Long Island Univ.) in his youth. Born in 1963, the author was raised in a largish Irish-Catholic family in Reading, Penn., and spent his childhood listening avidly to Barbra Streisand records and mooning over his favorite movies, especially The Sound of Music; Hello, Dolly!; The Poseidon Adventure; The Wiz; and Dog Day Afternoon. Into oppressively detailed transcriptions of scenes from this bleak canon he inserts anecdotes from his life and various fantasies the films inspired, but there is not much insight to be found in his shaggily meandering chatter. Horrigan’s piano teacher commented on Christopher Plummer’s cardboard character in The Sound of Music, and the author muses, “Apparently Mrs. Hasbrouck didn—t think all men were alike or that they were all as bad as Captain von Trapp. Hmm!” Aerial shots and grand spaces fascinated him—the Poseidon’s ballroom, the restaurant into which Streisand descends during the title number of Hello, Dolly!, the von Trapps” villa, the Alps, several screen depictions of New York City—but it seems the chief reason for this attraction was that his own house was too crowded for him to masturbate comfortably. Grasping at straws, he reads The Poseidon Adventure as a metaphor for the homosexual’s struggle to come out. Horrigan imagined his life would become special only if he were a movie star, and the book climaxes with a lengthy treatment of a homoerotic film in which the adolescent author would co-star with Al Pacino (“So Al would bury his face in my neck, but rather than lift it again, he would linger there,” etc.), followed by a sophomoric imaginary interview with Dick Cavett. Horrigan seems not to have grown out of the juvenile self-absorption re-created here, however; he invites us to wallow with him in his obsessions, but he does nothing to make us care. (photos, not seen) (Author tour)
Pub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-299-16160-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
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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