With amiable chutzpah, the head of the decorative arts department at Sotheby's tells the story of his fabulous rise in the arts and society. ``Collecting at Sotheby's is the penultimate act,'' declares Woolley. After a brief post-college apprenticeship at A La Vieille Russie, the posh antiques store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, Woolley, then 24, was hired by Sotheby Parke Bernet to work in its furniture department. But at his first meeting with Peregrine Pollen, Peter Wilson, and Marcus Linnellrespectively president, chairman, and head of decorative arts at Sotheby's at that timethe young upstart began telling them what they were doing wrong. While working at A La Vieille Russie, Woolley had made a killing on Russian art from Sotheby's because the works were undervalued. He told them that they needed to auction specific artworks separately from an estate sale and to make sure that all the significant collectors knew about them. Somehow Woolley not only convinced them to schedule a sale on Russian art, he also was put in charge of the sale and was allowed to auctioneer it himself. Woolley proved himself to be not only knowledgeable but cool with the gavel and a natural ham. Soon he was being sent on buying trips to Russia. At 30 he was made senior vice president and head of decorative arts. That same year he met Jeffrey Childs, who became his longtime lover. Childs, however, continued to sleep with many other men. He contracted AIDS and died in 1987. Woolley put his auctioneering skills to good use by conducting ``fantasy auctions'' for AIDS charities and other causes. Now, at age 50, Woolley also has AIDS, about which he is pragmatic. ``The ultimate act, of course,'' he writes, ``is dying.'' Refreshingly irreverent, Woolley lampoons his glittery worldand himselfwith good humor and style.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-684-81385-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 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 2026 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.
