A warmhearted testimony of gratitude and humility.
A prolific writer reflects on his commitment to his craft.
Essayist, novelist, playwright, and English professor Rosenblatt gathers a sampling from his 40-year writing career that reveals the “exhilaration and exasperation” of the work that has long engaged him: “I write simply because I am enthralled with the writer’s life, mad for it, and with the act of writing.” Among the pieces are excerpts—some as short as a paragraph—from longer works, such as his memoirs Kayak Morning (“Writing makes sorrow endurable, evil intelligible, justice desirable, and love possible”), The Boy Detective, Making Toast, and the unpublished Unaccompanied Minor; his mock instruction book Rules for Aging (nobody is “denigrating your work behind your back,” he promises); essays from previous collections, such as Anything Can Happen; pieces that appeared in newspapers and literary journals; and selections from published and unpublished novels and plays. One essay specifically on craft comes from his writing companion Unless It Moves the Human Heart, but not all pieces concern writing directly. Rosenblatt discloses, for example, his mother’s suffering from Alzheimer’s disease; praises a teacher from whom he learned to “look at the world with wonder and pleasure”; and describes an image, recalled from childhood, of seeing a young woman weeping on stone steps in Columbus Circle. Even though he knows that using a word processor would make life easier for his publishers, he prefers to compose on a yellow legal notepad and transcribe his work on an electric typewriter. “Editors never question why they must put my materials into the system for me,” he writes. “They have simply found it expedient to adapt to my strangeness, mainly because I have never indicated that I would adapt to them.” Appreciative of sound and cadence, Rosenblatt has always been nourished by poets. Sometimes nostalgic, even sad, he regrets that although he has not “eradicated world poverty” or “put an end to injustice, or even to casual cruelty,” he has given the world a singular bequest: love.
A warmhearted testimony of gratitude and humility.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-885983-78-7
Page Count: 262
Publisher: Turtle Point
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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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