A quietly fierce, resoundingly literate pedagogic autobiography. In an age when books are often regarded as mere texts, Pritchard (English/Amherst Coll.; Frost: A Literary Life Reconsidered, 1984, etc.) is one of the few remaining champions of literature for its own sake, an eloquent advocate of letting books ``speak for themselves in such a way as to lift us into a new, absorbing world.'' Pritchard has the nerve to argue not only for the value of ``Great Books'' but also for reading's crucial role in teaching one to write and, indeed, to think. In the tradition of The Education of Henry Adams, Pritchard uses his own education as a fulcrum for trying to understand the swirl of his times. First as an undergraduate at Amherst and then as a graduate student at Columbia and Harvard, he was the beneficiary of what has often been called the ``golden age'' of American universities, a time when there was a ``virtually unanimous consensus about the best way to educate young people; about what they needed to know and the order in which they needed to know it.'' But then, as an English professor at Amherst, Pritchard watched in shock as the '60s tore this consensus apart. Some changes, including coeducation and increasing minority enrollment, were long overdue, but many, especially the gutting of core requirements, he regards as devastating. This decline of the American university has been frequently detailed but rarely with the kind of elegiac grace that characterizes this remembrance of things past. While Pritchard occasionally veers off into the esoteric and is a little too quote- happy (typical pitfalls of his profession), his intelligence and thoughtfulness are a welcome antidote to the spew and babble that have become all too characteristic of today's culture wars. A subtle, modest chronicle, yet one that often burns with a hard, gemlike flame.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 1-55597-234-9
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
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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