No, this isn't the tale of one man's love for a febrile sow- -it's the story of his obsession with Harley-Davidson motorcycles. An aging biker (pushing 40) who's been out of the saddle since college, novelist La Plante (Leopard, 1994, etc.) finds it all coming back with an Easy Rider rush after he buys a small Harley, the 883 Sportster. Initially, as an American living in London, he tools around unlicensed—until the fuzz catches up with him and he's compelled to attend a special training school, where his lack of skill rises to high relief. For all his (mostly cheerful) blather about the metaphysical entwinement of man and machine, La Plante is a weak rider (corners are his nemesis). But he has Harley on the brain, so it isn't long before he's subscribing to countless biker magazines and chasing the London and L.A. Harley crowds (Billy Idol, Schwarzenegger, Stallone). His love of chrome also imperils his already precarious finances as he upgrades to ever bigger machines that he can more enthusiastically customize. The mark of a genuine ``Hog Fever'' sufferer, customizing includes modifications to both the bike's look and its performance. With the assistance of various master mechanics, La Plante gradually transforms his stock Big Twin Springer Softail into a fearsome road chariot, the sort of rumbling spectacle that stops traffic and earns him the respect of Hell's Angels. He even manages to answer the inevitable phallic-symbol accusations by freely admitting that he's addicted to the masturbatory ritual of endlessly polishing his iron horse. Less a rite-of-passage narrative than a chronicle of a spoiled kid and his pricey toys, the book culminates with La Plante's account of crossing the US with a pack of neoconservative outlaw posers. Fewer Zen sound bites and more butch shoptalk with the motorheads would have helped temper the over-the-hill road-warrior clichÇs. Still, an amusing subcultural memoir. (Author tour)
Pub Date: April 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-85884-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1995
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
