Novick, who previously dissected the life of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (Honorable Justice, 1989), now examines, in lumbering detail, the childhood and early manhood of Holmes's friend and contemporary, novelist Henry James. Two snares await the unwary James biographer. First, how does one compel interest in a subject whose daily routine comprised morning strolls, afternoon teas, and nights at the theater—but little if anything in the way of love affairs or social conflict? Second, how does one portray a writer too reticent even to hint at his innermost heart in his copious correspondence and memoirs? If you're Novick, you fall head-first into the traps, even as you take issue with Leon Edel, R.W.B. Lewis, Alfred Habegger, and other cautious but far more artful James family chroniclers. Novick resorts to a dry, at points day-by-day account of the novelist's social rounds. He argues with Edel et al. for perpetuating the notion that James ``retreated from the terrors of heterosexual rivalry into a world of delicate imagination.'' However, even though Novick's assumption that James was homosexual seems plausible given the latter's aversion to marriage and intense attachment to young men, the biographer also claims to know the date of James's first sexual encounter (the spring of 1865) and even the paramour (Holmes)—suppositions resting on only a maddeningly elusive James journal reference to ``l'initiation premiäre.'' All this is a shame because Novick can display commendable insight on occasion. For instance, he traces how Henry James Sr. damaged several of his children through capricious choices for their education and careers—and how Henry Jr. escaped this parental suffocation by traveling abroad and by building a secret, inviolate self. This sense of privacy ensured a short-lived career as Paris correspondent for the New York Tribune, but it served him well in his landmark fiction of psychological insight. This volume ends in 1880, with James in full command of his craft. Too bad his biographer can't claim the same. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-394-58655-7
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1996
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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