A worthwhile biography of a worthy subject: Paddy Chayefsky, probably the finest writer to emerge from television. The author of gossipy books about Barbra Streisand and the Bette DavisJoan Crawford feud (Bette and Joan, 1989, etc.) would seem to be an odd author to chronicle the life of a serious writer, but Considine's admiration for Chayefsky's work shines through every page of this absorbing book. Clearly bored with some of the traditional baggage of biography, Considine hustles through Chayefsky's early life in a few brief, awkward chapters. However, from the moment Chayefsky turned his hand to writing, Considine stretches out to provide richly detailed accounts of each of his productions. Chayefsky's first great success came in 1953 with his original television drama Marty, a pioneering work in the naturalistic style whose film version, two years later, brought Chayefsky the first of three Academy Awards. Considine reveals that Chayefsky had a brief affair with leading lady Kim Novak during the filming of Middle of the Night (a revelation that is too coyly teased at in the book's introduction). Career setbacks plagued Chayefsky in the '60s as he attempted to widen the scope of his work, but he staged a remarkable comeback in the '70s with the films The Hospital and Network. If Considine's book seems to cover five parts career to one part life, it quickly becomes evident that this was how Chayefsky lived. A psychological portrait emerges of a deeply divided man with an unhappy wife and a troubled son. Only after a horrible experience with what would be his last film, Altered States, did Chayefsky finally began to integrate his personality and find some peace, only to die as he turned to new work. An exceptional book that, it is hoped, will prompt a reappraisal of the entire range of Paddy Chayefsky's writing. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-40892-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1994
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
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