Entertaining and thoughtful observations bring The Redhead into sharp focus. (16-page photo insert, 15 additional photos in...
Canny critic and cultural historian Kanfer (Serious Business, 1998, etc.) brings a bemused attitude and a keen knowledge of show business to a tale that’s becoming as familiar as an I Love Lucy rerun.
Back again we go to Lucille Ball’s early days in Jamestown, New York, followed by her youthful sorties to Manhattan and work as a model. An agent’s tip sent her to Hollywood, where she toiled first as a featured extra in musicals, then as the lead in some B-plus films, none of them bringing the kind of stardom reached by rival RKO contract player Ginger Rogers. It took a tiny, black-and-white TV screen and the role of housewife Lucy Ricardo to bring Ball success and, eventually, a place alongside Chaplin and Keaton as a comic icon. On the set, the woman behind the sweet, goofy image was a hellion. She tore off Vivian Vance’s eyelashes, kicked husband Desi in the groin (several times), and gave Richard Burton line readings, prompting Mrs. Burton to label Miss Ball “Miss Cunt.” Off the set, Desi retaliated with compulsive gambling, constant boozing, and serial adultery, often with prostitutes. His professional judgment, however, remained shrewd and unerring. Long after he and Ball divorced, he advised her not to star in the film version of the stage hit Mame. She ignored the insight and took the part, stumbling into the sad last act of her career with a damaging flop. A second, comfortable marriage to comic Gary Morton, some quality time with her children, and the usual round of testimonial affairs brought a measure of happiness to the end of a turbulent, perhaps even an unsatisfying life.
Entertaining and thoughtful observations bring The Redhead into sharp focus. (16-page photo insert, 15 additional photos in text)Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2003
ISBN: 0-375-41315-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2003
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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