No ease anywhere, but the text conveys a dreamlike sense of standing outside oneself and observing that keeps things from...
An unsettling account of trying to connect with inmates at a Vermont jail through a literature class.
A deeply unhappy graduate student seeking something beyond “a relatively narrow, officially approved life with officially approvable people,” newcomer Padnos in 1999 stakes a claim at the ratty world of the Woodstock Regional Correctional Facility, a waystation for those awaiting trial. Inmates don’t flock to his basement classroom, but there is a slow accrual of interest from the men, many of them quite young, who have been accused of committing unspeakable crimes. These crimes will be spoken of in grim detail that nearly makes a reader want to turn away in dread. But it is through their circumstances that Padnos comes to profile the students who sit in his classroom, where menace hangs in the air with greater weight than the words of Walt Whitman or Stephen King. Though he often hears the inmates’ stories through a prism of suspicion—trust appears to be a word with little application here—the author tries to keep jadedness at bay. The stories voice the men’s longings, he knows, even if those longings are apocalyptic in nature and substance. Padnos wants his students to find some reverb with the material, to stitch it together with what motivated their acts and what they had hoped to achieve by them: “The goal was to jerk them out of their routine, to help them see their lives with the clarity of an observer.” Often enough, this leads them deeper into the desperate. Huck Finn may be a universal icon, but what strikes home at Woodstock is the cold comfort of a Denis Johnson story. “Their lives have been rich in sorrow and strangeness,” Padnos writes of his students. “They’re wealthy at least in these departments.”
No ease anywhere, but the text conveys a dreamlike sense of standing outside oneself and observing that keeps things from getting too scary.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-7868-6909-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
If that promise of clarity is what awaits us all, then death doesn’t seem so awful, and that is a great gift from Sacks. A...
Valediction from the late neurologist and writer Sacks (On the Move: A Life, 2015, etc.).
In this set of four short essays, much-forwarded opinion pieces from the New York Times, the author ponders illness, specifically the metastatic cancer that spread from eye to liver and in doing so foreclosed any possibility of treatment. His brief reflections on that unfortunate development give way to, yes, gratitude as he examines the good things that he has experienced over what, in the end, turned out to be a rather long life after all, lasting 82 years. To be sure, Sacks has regrets about leaving the world, not least of them not being around to see “a thousand…breakthroughs in the physical and biological sciences,” as well as the night sky sprinkled with stars and the yellow legal pads on which he worked sprinkled with words. Sacks works a few familiar tropes and elaborates others. Charmingly, he reflects on his habit since childhood of associating each year of his life with the element of corresponding atomic weight on the periodic table; given polonium’s “intense, murderous radioactivity,” then perhaps 84 isn’t all that it’s cut out to be. There are some glaring repetitions here, unfortunate given the intense brevity of this book, such as his twice citing Nathaniel Hawthorne’s call to revel in “intercourse with the world”—no, not that kind. Yet his thoughts overall—while not as soul-stirringly inspirational as the similar reflections of Randy Pausch or as bent on chasing down the story as Christopher Hitchens’ last book—are shaped into an austere beauty, as when Sacks writes of being able in his final moments to “see my life as from a great altitude, as a sort of landscape, and with a deepening sense of the connection of all its parts.”
If that promise of clarity is what awaits us all, then death doesn’t seem so awful, and that is a great gift from Sacks. A fitting, lovely farewell.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-451-49293-7
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
A timely contribution to the discussion of a crucial issue.
A history of the right to vote in America.
Since the nation’s founding, many Americans have been uneasy about democracy. Law and policy expert Waldman (The Second Amendment: A Biography, 2014, etc.), president of New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, offers a compelling—and disheartening—history of voting in America, from provisions of the Constitution to current debates about voting rights and campaign financing. In the Colonies, only white male property holders could vote and did so in public, by voice. With bribery and intimidation rampant, few made the effort. After the Revolution, many states eliminated property requirements so that men over 21 who had served in the militia could vote. But leaving voting rules to the states disturbed some lawmakers, inciting a clash between those who wanted to restrict voting and those “who sought greater democracy.” That clash fueled future debates about allowing freed slaves, immigrants, and, eventually, women to vote. In 1878, one leading intellectual railed against universal suffrage, fearing rule by “an ignorant proletariat and a half-taught plutocracy.” Voting corruption persisted in the 19th century, when adoption of the secret ballot “made it easier to stuff the ballot box” by adding “as many new votes as proved necessary.” Southern states enacted disenfranchising measures, undermining the 15th Amendment. Waldman traces the campaign for women’s suffrage; the Supreme Court’s dismal record on voting issues (including Citizens United); and the contentious fight to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which “became a touchstone of consensus between Democrats and Republicans” and was reauthorized four times before the Supreme Court “eviscerated it in 2013.” Despite increased access to voting, over the years, turnout has fallen precipitously, and “entrenched groups, fearing change, have…tried to reduce the opportunity for political participation and power.” Waldman urges citizens to find a way to celebrate democracy and reinvigorate political engagement for all.
A timely contribution to the discussion of a crucial issue.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1648-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
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