Sharp, stylish, and anecdotal, the books offers a fresh glimpse into a fertile artistic world.
Personal perspectives on the creation of modernism.
First published in 1963, this charming collection of reminiscences by surrealist poet Philippe Soupault (1897-1990) offers warm, generous, appreciative profiles of some of his famous contemporaries. Framed by an introduction by Mark Polizzotti, who interviewed Soupault as part of his research about Breton, and an afterword by poet Ron Padgett, who met the author in 1975, the volume includes pieces on writers whom Soupault knew well, including Guillaume Apollinaire, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, René Crevel, Pierre Reverdy, Georges Bernanos, and Blaise Cendrars, and two from the past: painter Henri Rousseau and poet Charles Baudelaire. Coming of age as an artist after World War I, Soupault says the spirit of the times was one of destruction, incited by the arrival of Tristan Tzara (“like a bomb”), who brought Dadaism, the iconoclastic movement that set the stage for surrealism. Dada, Soupault saw, was trying “to destroy all the established values, the literary practices, and the moral bias that the great captains of literature and journalism want to continue imposing.” Although not a Dadaist, Apollinaire recognized a “new spirit” in art; calling himself “a signal rocket,” he was an outspoken defender of cubism. The shocked response to his writings taught Soupault the importance of scandal. He deeply admired Joyce, who at the time they met was writing Ulysses; they went to the theater and opera together, always sitting in the first row, where the nearly blind Joyce could better see the stage. As a writer, Soupault observed, Joyce was “tormented by a word, rebelliously constructing a framework…drawing a hallucination from music.” Padgett notes that Reverdy and Cendrars, two vastly different personalities, served as Soupault’s mentors. Reverdy coveted solitude; Cendrars loved people, hanging out at the Café de Flore, “fedora askew and cigarette butt on his lip,” always “madly cheerful.”
Sharp, stylish, and anecdotal, the books offers a fresh glimpse into a fertile artistic world.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-87286-727-7
Page Count: 112
Publisher: City Lights
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
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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