An inspiring, satisfying book affirming the author’s “immense” debt to African American music and how it changed his life.
The ghostwriter of autobiographies by Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, and numerous other musical greats tells his own story of faith and recovery.
In this winning, remarkably candid memoir, Ritz (co-author, with Jessi Colter: An Outlaw and a Lady: A Memoir of Music, Life with Waylon, and the Faith That Brought Me Home, 2017, etc.) turns the table on himself. At 75, after capturing some three dozen voices for celebrity autobiographies, he recounts his life and career as a freelancer, songwriter, and author; his personal struggles with multiple addictions; and his eventual acceptance of Jesus, whose spirit he encountered over the past 45 years through the voices of musicians. “The divinity in music…has sustained me,” he writes. Born into a turbulent New York family (his blue-collar father, an outspoken Marxist intellectual and music lover, confided that he was cheating on David’s mother), Ritz flirted briefly with academia (the critic Leslie Fiedler was a grad school mentor), worked in advertising, and then, in his early 30s, convinced singer Ray Charles to collaborate on a memoir. Ritz continued to co-write books with musicians he admired, mainly African Americans raised on gospel music—many were preachers’ kids—and found himself gaining “Christ consciousness” in conversations with devout performers like B.B. King, Etta James (she asked Ritz to pray with her), Smokey Robinson, and others. Bored by his parents’ Judaism and grappling with bisexuality, a pot habit, and a speech impediment, the author gradually found self-acceptance through his “rapport with Jesus.” Ritz captures all of this in vivid, deeply felt prose that traces dysfunctions in his birth family and marriage, his work with blues and country singers, his pursuit of therapy and 12-step programs, and his present belief that “God is the groove.”
An inspiring, satisfying book affirming the author’s “immense” debt to African American music and how it changed his life.Pub Date: July 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-7715-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Howard Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
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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