Both an indelible portrait of the artist as a weird young man and an elegant survey of one of the most vital and...
Former Musician and Life editor Scherman (Backbeat: Earl Palmer’s Story, 2000) and Rolling Stone founding editor Dalton (Edie Factory Girl, 2006, etc.) offer a comprehensive reappraisal of the ’60s heyday of pop-art savant Andy Warhol.
The authors focus on the techniques and governing philosophy of the work that profoundly influenced both “high” and “low” culture, effectively collapsing the barrier between the two. Examining Warhol’s most fertile period, roughly 1961 to the artist’s near-fatal shooting in 1968, Scherman and Dalton marshal a staggering amount of research and copious interviews with Warhol’s associates to provide new insights into the creation of the famous images of soup cans and soda bottles, serial celebrity portraits, multimedia happenings and experimental films that alternately energized and horrified the fine-art establishment. Though the authors concentrate mostly on the work itself, it is so inextricably tied to Warhol’s personality that a psychological portrait of the artist emerges. Warhol, morbidly shy and insecure, sexually stymied and determinedly vague and affectless, inserted himself into the heart of the culture through a native sense of canny manipulation and an infallible eye for design. Childish, casually cruel and ruthless in his personal and professional relationships, Warhol stands as a monument to the power of passive aggression. Vivid portraits of such Warhol-adjacent luminaries as Jasper Johns, The Velvet Underground, Bob Dylan and Factory “superstars” Edie Sedgwick and Gerard Malanga provide much of the narrative’s color, elements that recombined in endlessly fascinating and fruitful ways with Warhol as the gnomic, giggling catalyst.
Both an indelible portrait of the artist as a weird young man and an elegant survey of one of the most vital and revolutionary periods in American popular culture—a richly detailed, kaleidoscopic treat.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-06-621243-2
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2009
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
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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