Likable but overly earnest, as if convinced of its own importance.
Roaming ruminations on life and art.
WWMD? What would Montaigne do? Left to write a fresh collection of essays, he might not lead with a piece in which expectoration takes center stage: “I spit more than most people, as far as I know. In one day, I can spit as much as a liter.” A physics student who found true love on a proselytizing mission and who now teaches English at Brigham Young University, Madden (Quotidiana: Essays, 2010, etc.) measures and monitors. The penultimate piece in this collection is a long and loopy excursus on plagiarism and its practitioners and miscontents—among many other subjects, that is, for the essay is a perfect vehicle for straying from the point, and Madden often does. It is so long, one suspects, because, as the author gladly owns up, at 30,000 words it “is approximately the length of Montaigne’s longest essays.” But there’s no comparison: Montaigne strode the countryside thinking great thoughts, while Madden finds himself recalling—more than once throughout this collection—lyrics from rock songs and the high-pitched warblings of Rush vocalist Geddy Lee. No offense to Lee, but there are weightier matters in the world. On other matters musical, as with Madden’s exploration of John Lennon’s song “Jealous Guy,” one wishes for some more oomph—e.g., a more in-depth discussion of the nature of jealousy. Still, points should be given for Madden’s ability to bring Zeno into the picture, but Greil Marcus might take a sharper scalpel to the patient. There are some fine and laudable moments in the book, though, as when Madden settles into one real subject, the tempus fugit nature of our lives: “The fleeting moments that made up my life seemed to stretch before me to a point so distant it may as well have been the edge of the universe.”
Likable but overly earnest, as if convinced of its own importance.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8032-3984-5
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Univ. of Nebraska
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
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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