Funnyman Pinkwater has written ``about 50'' children's books and illustrated most of them. For the past few years he's been doing short, laid-back spots on NPR. This book, sprung from the radio pieces, ``turns out,'' he says, ``to be a fragmentary autobiography.'' Just don't expect the kind of facts you'd get from Current Biography; Pinkwater has more interest in relating anecdotes, or just observing through his own bemused eyes. And so, in mostly one- to three-page bits suitable for reading in the bathroom, Pinkwater muses on or recollects some odd and ordinary moments from his Chicago childhood and later Zen-like art training there, his ``instructional malnutrition'' as a college art-student, his other spells and travels here and there, and his 12 years in Hoboken, ``my spiritual home for the rest of my life''—a ``quaint'' community preoccupied with crime and politics, ``which sometimes overlap,'' and inhabited by ``da-salt-u-da-eart, with some of the highest-grade eccentrics and loonies mixed in.'' Today he lives in an old farmhouse in upstate New York, where he is getting to know the crows, even though ``the guy who owned this little farm before we did had one of those psychoses in which the idea of being in America and killing everything living in the area are mixed in together.'' The book is all small stuff: An entry from recent years tells of his panic on hearing a slow-talking radio guy announce an upcoming concert of music by ``Daniel...Pink...ham.'' In the end, you might not know what Pinkwater's father actually did for a living...or how he met his wife...or much about his writing. But you might feel fond of this wiggy talent who has at least kept you smiling. And Pinkwater fans can have the fun of recognizing germs of his fiction here and there.
Pub Date: Nov. 21, 1991
ISBN: 0-201-52359-0
Page Count: 175
Publisher: Addison-Wesley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1991
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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