An always devoted, sometimes naive fan attains his fondest wish and gets to work for his hero, Sovereign Wit of the Age, Groucho Marx Himself. Here he presents the quotidian details. Stoliar, now a television writer, joined a foundering household as Groucho's secretary and gofer for the last three years of the failing master's life. When he started, he was 19, Groucho was 83. It was a case of a puerile youth and a sad old pantaloon. Always honored by whatever notice the comic paid him, Stoliar took note of every snappy quip the old man could mutter. While much of it is less than significant, devotees will savor the passing references to the great, nearly forgotten songs and tag lines of the Marx canon. Not surprisingly, the author shares the limelight with Groucho, though lots of others appear from the wings chez Marx. There's son Arthur Marx and George Burns, for example. There's Marvin Hamlisch and Mae West, Nat Perrin and Nunnally Johnson, Ryskind and Perelman. There's Dick Cavett (to whom the author toadies a bit and who, it happens, has supplied the introduction to his text). The most singular character, not excepting Groucho, is the notorious Erin Flemming, the mercurial woman who, it was apparent to all who saw her in action, stole Groucho's very soul. Because it deals with a particular period in the life and death of the famous man, the book is, perforce, a unique addition to the Marxist athenaeum. Still, it is two parts a below-stairs, I-was-there, tell-all gossip piece and one part Sunset Boulevard, with Groucho Marx in the Swanson role. The net effect is simply melancholy. If Groucho had had the chance to read this, he'd have surely fired off a nasty, nifty letter, probably on the letterhead of Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel. (b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: March 1, 1996
ISBN: 1-881649-73-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1996
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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