A layered portrait of the legendary singer whose self-destructiveness came to overshadow his hits.
A biography of soul singer “Wicked” Wilson Pickett (1941-2006).
Born in the rural sharecropping community of Prattville, Alabama, Pickett was known equally for his pious upbringing and participation as a singer in his church as well as his rebellious spirit and habit for troublemaking. It would be the latter that would come to define his offstage behavior, but it was his experience singing gospel that would lead to his ascendency as one of the pre-eminent soul singers of his generation. Throughout the book, Fletcher (A Light that Never Goes Out: The Enduring Saga of the Smiths, 2012, etc.) ably explores this dichotomy in Pickett’s character. Breaking through with such hits as “In the Midnight Hour” and “Land of 1000 Dances,” Pickett was a mainstay on the R&B and pop charts during the 1960s, and he was known for his work ethic in the studio. Outside the studio, however, Pickett earned his “wicked” nickname; he was a notorious womanizer and would often brandish his pistol in anger. One of the most fascinating aspects of Fletcher’s skillful biography is the ongoing subplot of Pickett’s rivalry with James Brown. Whereas Brown evolved his style through the ’60s and solidified his identity around black empowerment, Pickett remained mostly an “interpreter” of other writers’ songs and was largely ambivalent regarding social issues. Pickett’s success would dramatically change in the ’70s following a multirecord deal with RCA. Subsequent album releases would see his sales plummet, and critical responses were unkind. Growing drug and alcohol use made him increasingly unstable, a situation exacerbated by his separation from longtime partner Dovie Hall. In one of the most damning anecdotes related by the author, Pickett insisted his teenage son partake in cocaine with him. His erratic behavior only worsened, including multiple arrests, domestic abuse scandals, and some jail time, before a mild resurrection of his career before his death.
A layered portrait of the legendary singer whose self-destructiveness came to overshadow his hits.Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-19-025294-6
Page Count: 328
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2016
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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