One for the practicing Dylanologist—general readers should approach with caution.
A noted historian tries to shed light on the less-traveled byways in Bob Dylan’s epic journey.
As he explains in his introduction, Wilentz (History/Princeton Univ.; The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974–2008, 2008, etc.) is “historian-in-residence” for Dylan’s website. Here he attempts to situate the musician in a multitude of American musical, cultural and literary contexts. The author begins with a strained and unconvincing stab at tying Dylan to composer Aaron Copland—a better case might have been made for Marc Blitzstein, who is mentioned cursorily—but the second chapter, about the impact of the Beats (specifically, Allen Ginsberg), is more successful. Wilentz then plots a chronological course through several highlights and lowlights of his subject’s career; several chapters expand on previously published essays. The author is at his best when examining such unquestioned diadems as Blonde On Blonde (1966) and the tardily released 1983 song “Blind Willie McTell,” both of which benefit from Wilentz’s access to original session tapes. He is less successful when addressing live performances, including a 1964 solo show at Philharmonic Hall in New York and a 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue tour stop in New Haven, both of which were attended by the author. Sometimes Wilentz’s arguments become attenuated to near-pointlessness. His numbing readings of the misbegotten films Renaldo and Clara (1978) and Masked and Anonymous (2003) and his labored explication of the roots of Dylan’s recording of “Lone Pilgrim” are especially taxing. The book gains heat with a rousing defense of Dylan’s multitudinous borrowings in his latter-day work, called outright plagiarism by some (including, most recently, singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell). Wilentz ends with an apology for the wacky 2009 seasonal album, Christmas in the Heart, though it makes the record no less mystifying. The author is capable of sometimes striking and unexpected insights linking Dylan to American precursors ranging from Abraham Lincoln to Bing Crosby, but his frequently misguided ideas and oft-leaden style weigh down the proceedings.
One for the practicing Dylanologist—general readers should approach with caution.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-385-52988-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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
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