by William McCranor Henderson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 1997
A rollicking piece of gonzo journalism by a novelist whose first book, Stark Raving Elvis (1984), was a fictional take on the same subject. Gamely accepting a challenge from his editor, the 52-year-old Henderson set about making himself into a plausible Elvis impersonator: He acquired a brass-studded jumpsuit, wig, and karaoke tapes; scoped out other working Elvises; practiced the songs and the moves. A musician friend let him try out a mini Elvis set in the middle of an outdoor concert, then he entered a contest in New Hampshire (he came in last) and performed in an Elvis showcase in Jacksonville, Fla., in preparation for the grand prix of the mock-Elvis circuit, Memphis's annual Images of Elvis competition. Henderson's project actually required two visits to Memphis: On his preliminary visit to ``the holy city,'' an old pal with the immortal name of Fetzer Mills showed Henderson the highlights, including Sun Studios, Graceland, and an Elvis shrine outside of town called Graceland Too, an antebellum house crammed full of Elvis memorabilia and open 24 hours. (Fetzer, who sings rockabilly, bounces between jobs, and tries to market fat brown ``Elvis Buddha'' figurines to the local souvenir shops, is one of the best literary characters in some time, fiction or nonfiction.) Henderson captures without fuss or condescension the gut-level fandom that makes people, including himself, want to impersonate Elvis, and he is dead-on about the cultural divide, largely along class lines, that separates Elvis fans from those who have never really gotten it. (Fetzer offers another theme for the book: ``It's the generation war between the young Elvises and the mutants.'') But Henderson's great achievement is to convey, in elegantly droll prose, what it's like to imagine being a great performer—``the Elvis equivalent of flying dreams''—in the face of real-world evidence to the contrary. A jolly, sparkling trip through Elvis country. (photos, not seen) (For another look at Elvis impersonators, see Leslie Rubinkowski, Impersonating Elvis, p. 858.)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-57297-255-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1997
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BOOK REVIEW
by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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SEEN & HEARD
by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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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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