The autobiography of a prominent folksinger/actor/activist of the 1950s and '60s. It's difficult to write the story of a good man, harder still when the good man is writing his own story: Bikel does not entirely avoid the pitfall of a self-congratulatory tone. Still, his is a compelling life, taking him from preWW II Eastern Europe to an acting career in Israel; emigration to England after the war, training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, and initial success in British theater and film; a leap to the Broadway stage and stardom in The Sound of Music; productive years as a Hollywood character actor; a new career as a folksinger in the late '50s; then several decades of activism, as president of Actors' Equity and a prominent figure in the civil rights and antiVietnam War movements. Of late, he has made a career out of playing Tevye in many road productions of Fiddler on the Roof while guest starring in made-for-TV dramas ranging from the classy (``L.A. Law'') to the crass (``Dynasty''). Bikel has rubbed elbows with a fascinating parade of directors and actors (John Huston, Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, Mary Martin), singer/songwriters (Pete Seeger, Buffy Sainte- Marie, Phil Ochs, Frank Zappa), activists (Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael), and politicians (presidents Carter and Clinton invited him to the White House frequently; their Republican counterparts were, unsurprisingly, less friendly). As a performer, activist, and actor, he is a natural moderate-liberal. He seems surprised that ``folk purists'' object to his smoothing out the unusual harmonies of traditional music in his slickly commercial performances; similarly, as an early supporter of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), he was upset when the leadership turned increasingly radical, from ``freedom marchers...[to] freedom fighters.'' A model life for those inclined to save the Earth while strumming a guitar. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Oct. 12, 1994
ISBN: 0-06-019044-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
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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