Sprinkled with subtle touches of poetic discourse and the author’s deeply felt passion and admiration for Frank’s work, this...
Dissecting the mysterious Robert Frank (b. 1924).
In his erudite new biography, Smith (The One: The Life and Music of James Brown, 2012, etc.) explains that Frank is the type to quickly walk out the back door at an event to avoid interviews and send critics and fans running. Though this eccentric character may seem like a perfect New York City creation, he started his life in Zurich in the 1920s. It wasn’t until 1947, after living through the atrocities of the war and the inescapable solitude his Jewish religion instilled, that Frank came to the United States. He arrived at the height of the postwar bloom in creative productions of all types. But for a man like Frank, New York was just a temporary appeaser to his overflowing curiosity. He went off to Europe and South America to explore the range of images he could produce with limited resources. “I’m always looking outside, trying to look inside,” he once said. “Trying to tell something that’s true. But maybe nothing is really true—except what’s out there, and what’s out there is always different.” Through it all, though, New York remained Frank’s muse. Encountering artists such as Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Jonas Mekas, Frank eventually took to the camera to explore the moving image. In parallel, he was also working on his opus, The Americans (1958), which, though viewed today as a foundational work in defining an American identity during the postwar era, was met with significant criticism. Smith compellingly tells the story of one of the most iconic and notoriously aloof artists of the 20th century in a way that is neither dry nor contrived; he helps us to know a seemingly unknowable artist.
Sprinkled with subtle touches of poetic discourse and the author’s deeply felt passion and admiration for Frank’s work, this book is a page-turning emotional delight.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-306-82336-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Da Capo
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
If that promise of clarity is what awaits us all, then death doesn’t seem so awful, and that is a great gift from Sacks. A...
Valediction from the late neurologist and writer Sacks (On the Move: A Life, 2015, etc.).
In this set of four short essays, much-forwarded opinion pieces from the New York Times, the author ponders illness, specifically the metastatic cancer that spread from eye to liver and in doing so foreclosed any possibility of treatment. His brief reflections on that unfortunate development give way to, yes, gratitude as he examines the good things that he has experienced over what, in the end, turned out to be a rather long life after all, lasting 82 years. To be sure, Sacks has regrets about leaving the world, not least of them not being around to see “a thousand…breakthroughs in the physical and biological sciences,” as well as the night sky sprinkled with stars and the yellow legal pads on which he worked sprinkled with words. Sacks works a few familiar tropes and elaborates others. Charmingly, he reflects on his habit since childhood of associating each year of his life with the element of corresponding atomic weight on the periodic table; given polonium’s “intense, murderous radioactivity,” then perhaps 84 isn’t all that it’s cut out to be. There are some glaring repetitions here, unfortunate given the intense brevity of this book, such as his twice citing Nathaniel Hawthorne’s call to revel in “intercourse with the world”—no, not that kind. Yet his thoughts overall—while not as soul-stirringly inspirational as the similar reflections of Randy Pausch or as bent on chasing down the story as Christopher Hitchens’ last book—are shaped into an austere beauty, as when Sacks writes of being able in his final moments to “see my life as from a great altitude, as a sort of landscape, and with a deepening sense of the connection of all its parts.”
If that promise of clarity is what awaits us all, then death doesn’t seem so awful, and that is a great gift from Sacks. A fitting, lovely farewell.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-451-49293-7
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.
More life reflections from the bestselling author on themes of societal captivity and the catharsis of personal freedom.
In her third book, Doyle (Love Warrior, 2016, etc.) begins with a life-changing event. “Four years ago,” she writes, “married to the father of my three children, I fell in love with a woman.” That woman, Abby Wambach, would become her wife. Emblematically arranged into three sections—“Caged,” “Keys,” “Freedom”—the narrative offers, among other elements, vignettes about the soulful author’s girlhood, when she was bulimic and felt like a zoo animal, a “caged girl made for wide-open skies.” She followed the path that seemed right and appropriate based on her Catholic upbringing and adolescent conditioning. After a downward spiral into “drinking, drugging, and purging,” Doyle found sobriety and the authentic self she’d been suppressing. Still, there was trouble: Straining an already troubled marriage was her husband’s infidelity, which eventually led to life-altering choices and the discovery of a love she’d never experienced before. Throughout the book, Doyle remains open and candid, whether she’s admitting to rigging a high school homecoming court election or denouncing the doting perfectionism of “cream cheese parenting,” which is about “giving your children the best of everything.” The author’s fears and concerns are often mirrored by real-world issues: gender roles and bias, white privilege, racism, and religion-fueled homophobia and hypocrisy. Some stories merely skim the surface of larger issues, but Doyle revisits them in later sections and digs deeper, using friends and familial references to personify their impact on her life, both past and present. Shorter pieces, some only a page in length, manage to effectively translate an emotional gut punch, as when Doyle’s therapist called her blooming extramarital lesbian love a “dangerous distraction.” Ultimately, the narrative is an in-depth look at a courageous woman eager to share the wealth of her experiences by embracing vulnerability and reclaiming her inner strength and resiliency.
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0125-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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