More encomium than biography, Levi’s work traces the great Roman poet’s inspirations and influences backward and forward through time, via close readings of classical and modern texts. Though not an introduction, this rich analysis offers bountiful insights to anyone already familiar with the Aeneid and the poet’s early works. Granted, personal information about Publius Vergilius Maro is difficult to come by—only two ancient biographies exist, both just a few pages long. Thus, Levi, the biographer of Tennyson, Horace, and Edward Lear, weaves together historical analysis, gossip, and close readings of the poet’s oeuvre to infer a portrait of the poet. Springing from the Greek Homeric tradition of the Odyssey, Virgil created a new kind of hero in Aeneas: mythic, but also bound by human dilemmas. Levi does an excellent job of teasing out Virgil’s struggles with Homeric traditions of mythology and composition, and melding them with contemporary Roman experience under the rule of Augustus, who commissioned the Aeneid (Virgil also had another wealthy patron to thank for a comfortable living). Levi traces the poet’s relationships with authors such as Horace, whom he knew personally, and others he had most certainly read, such as Lucretius and Cicero. Though most classical linguists would argue with this biographer’s preference for the Dryden translation, Levi’s poetical analysis is instrumental as he guides us through each episode of the Eclogues, Georgics, and Aeneid, illuminating his favorite passages and dismissing others. Like Virgil, Levi packs some paragraphs so densely that in parts he will lose any but the most attentive readers. Such care is rewarded, however. What shines through is Levi’s love of Virgil and a lifetime of rumination and analysis. The biography label may be ill-fitting, but Levi’s textual explications are the next best thing to his course at Oxford.
Pub Date: Feb. 8, 1999
ISBN: 0-312-19352-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1998
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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