Gordon makes a convincing case that if music can’t exactly save us, it can tell us who we are.
The acclaimed music chronicler tells the story of Memphis through its songs.
Gordon (Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion, 2013, etc.) seeks to evoke the heart of the metropolis as reflected not only through its physical landscape, but also through its soul. The author’s latest is a collection of 20 profiles or portraits—subjects include, among others, Bobby Bland, Townes Van Zandt, Alex Chilton, and Jerry Lee Lewis—that together add up to a musical-textual collage. “I began to connect the art to the life,” he writes, referring to the Memphis blues player Furry Lewis, “to understand how Furry’s circumstances—his ramshackle dwelling and his history—were reflected in his songs.” The idea is to frame music as not just a way of life in other words, but also as life’s expression, which has been Gordon’s idea all along. Unlike his earlier books, this new work is something of a grab bag, bringing together liner notes and journalistic pieces, some never before in print. Given the subject, though, that approach seems oddly appropriate; music, after all, is complex and elusive, as are many of the people portrayed here. There’s Jim Dickinson, the legendary Memphis musician and producer who worked with Chilton and had performed on “Wild Horses.” “There’s a lot of people that can play better than me,” he declared. “But they can’t play with the Stones better than me.” Or Sam Phillips, who once carried on “a heated argument” with Jerry Lee Lewis at Sun studios: “Could the devil’s music save souls? Immediately after Sam withdrew from the room, Jerry Lee cut the master take of ‘Great Balls of Fire.’ ” Best of all is the author’s extended piece on the legal battle over Robert Johnson’s copyrights, a story originally written for LA Weekly, in which the art of business and the business of art become egregiously intertwined.
Gordon makes a convincing case that if music can’t exactly save us, it can tell us who we are.Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63286-773-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Jan. 7, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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