Isherwood was unquestionably a fascinating man. True fans of his work as well as gossip lovers will no doubt read all three...
Final volume of the meticulously detailed diaries of the acclaimed author of Goodbye to Berlin (1939) and other celebrated works.
Isherwood (1904–1986), who, writes Edmund White in his preface, “had a personality that sparkled,” was the icon of the infant gay liberation movement during the 1970s, where this collection picks up. Editor Bucknell’s (What You Will, 2008, etc.) close knowledge of the man and his world may have eased her monumental task, but it may be difficult going for readers not privy to the vast assortment of friends that Isherwood collected throughout his lifetime. In the last 135 pages, the editor presents a glossary explaining personages cited often or only once, events mentioned in passing and Hindu terminology. Most readers should consult the glossary first, as footnotes prove to be little more than distractions pointing out typos and errata. Isherwood knew that one day his diaries would be published, but readers may wonder if he assumed the mundane quotidian drivel would be edited out. The entries drag as he lists his weight, visits to the gym, swims in the ocean, movies attended, lunch with this famous cultural icon, dinner with another famous person, etc. His complete comfort with his homosexuality, his adoration of his partner, American portrait artist Don Bachardy, and the sheer variety of people whose “friendship never ends” may keep the pages turning for more dedicated readers, but his comments on his writing projects and these later diaries don’t really expose the man as writer, only as the man who writes.
Isherwood was unquestionably a fascinating man. True fans of his work as well as gossip lovers will no doubt read all three volumes of his diaries. For the rest of us, a simple biography should be sufficient.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-208474-3
Page Count: 928
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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
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
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