A mildly interesting though dubious, discursive account of one of modern golf’s pioneers.
The story of J. Douglas Edgar (1884–1921), inventor of the modern golf swing and a rising star before his untimely death, the victim of what newspaper heir Comer Howell and others believed was murder.
Edgar was found bleeding in an Atlanta street and died moments later. Eubanks (Golf Freek: One Man’s Quest to Play As Many Rounds of Golf As Possible. For Free., 2007, etc.) tells how Howell and some co-workers came upon the dying golfer and how, despite some odd circumstances surrounding his death, many people quickly concluded that Edgar was the victim of a hit-and-run auto accident. The book then alternates between an account of Howell’s involvement in the unfolding investigation of Edgar’s death and the story of Edgar’s life, from his early struggles in golf to his rise to prominence after inventing “the movement” that is considered the modern golf swing. Armed with archival material, family lore and notes from a veteran reporter friend who wrote about Edgar 40 years ago, Eubanks creates highly detailed scenes of his two protagonists’ lives. After some erratic performances on the course, writes the author, Edgar said to his assistant, “let’s gan straight up to me room an’ you can have a look at the way I’m swingin’ the cloob. It seems every bloody iron shot’s gannin left o’ the green.” The invented dialogue often makes the narrative read like a novel. Though the author notes that he relied on diaries, letters and transcripts when possible, and on family history elsewhere, he admits that “how accurate those conversations are after ninety years of retelling is anybody’s guess.” Readers who can tolerate periodic detours into tangential topics like World War I and Howell family history may find the book diverting on a rainy afternoon.
A mildly interesting though dubious, discursive account of one of modern golf’s pioneers.Pub Date: April 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-345-51081-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: ESPN Books/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2010
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
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
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