Sometimes familiar, sometimes fascinating discussion of the choreography of friendship, of the roots and routes of rivalry.
Literary friendships form and then sometimes falter or fail because writers, like the rest of us, grow away from each other, become competitive or have a failure to communicate.
Lingeman has substantial credentials as a critic of American literature, including a well-received biography of Sinclair Lewis (Sinclair Lewis, 2002), and his scholarship is much in evidence here. Although he does not in any systematic way ever define “friendship,” he does begin with some generic thoughts about why friendships form, change, endure, fracture. Following are his assessments of some of the most noted—and sometimes fragile—friendships in American literary history: Hawthorne and Melville, Twain and Howells, Wharton and James, Cather and Jewett, Dreiser and Mencken, Fitzgerald and Hemingway, Ginsberg and Kerouac and Cassady. The author relies heavily on the research of others (dutifully recorded in the endnotes—many, many of which begin with “Quoted in . . .”), and so his observations are often more synthesis than thesis. (As he observes, scholars have written entire volumes on these relationships.) But he is a reliable and amiable companion on this journey that often traverses familiar territory. The expository pattern is much the same: an explanation of how the principals met, a glance back at how they arrived at their meeting, a description of the time they were together and how their relationship affected their works, an account of their estrangement(s) (if there were any), a note about how things stood when the first of them died. If some of these tales are more than twice-told (it’s hard to say something fresh about Hawthorne and Melville), others are perceptive and revealing. Cather’s important meeting and subsequent correspondence with the older (and much-revered) Jewett helped embolden Cather to leave her editorial position at McClure’s and focus on her own fiction. And Dreiser entered a seven-year snit when former protégé Mencken trashed An American Tragedy.
Sometimes familiar, sometimes fascinating discussion of the choreography of friendship, of the roots and routes of rivalry.Pub Date: April 25, 2006
ISBN: 1-4000-6045-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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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