An exhaustive, illuminating life of Folkways Records founder Moe Asch, whose American and international folk-music releases laid the ground for the folk revival of the 1950s and ’60s and the world-music explosion of recent years. Goldsmith (Anthropology/Dartmouth) details splendidly Asch’s background. Born in 1905 in Warsaw, he was the son of Sholem Asch, the eminent Yiddish writer, who moved his family to New York to escape WWI. The senior Asch’s peripheral association with leftist political causes, disregard of Jewish orthodoxies, marital infidelity, and neglect of his children were all passed on to Moe Asch, who studied broadcasting technology and gradually drifted into recording at the end of the 1930s. At first, he recorded and released only Jewish cantorial songs, but in 1941 he met, was bowled over by, and began recording the folk-blues singer Leadbelly. Asch was soon recording other jazz, blues, and folk performers, including Art Tatum, James P. Johnson, a very young Pete Seeger, and the erratically brilliant Woody Guthrie. In addition to recording new music, Asch issued out-of-print American records from previous decades, as well as ambitious field recordings from the American South, Europe, Africa, and beyond. Folkways, which Asch ran until his death in 1986, made available much of the folk-song library that a new generation of civil-rights activists and singers drew on in the ’60s. Artists like Seeger were deeply committed to progressive politics, and Goldsmith analyzes well how folk was claimed by the political left (Asch himself generally promoted political causes only implicitly). Asch is portrayed here as —frequently uncomfortable in the presence of others—an emotionally stunted, socially isolated person,— thus there’s inevitably a cloak of vagueness over his motivations as both man and businessman that detracts from reader interest. But as an examination of how Folkways successfully mined obscure veins of vernacular music for four decades, this is a valuable study. (24 b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: May 1, 1998
ISBN: 1-56098-812-6
Page Count: 468
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1998
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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