Scholars could make use of this material, but it should otherwise interest only Fitzgerald completists.
A very short, incomplete diary in which ardent devotees of the novelist might find a glimmer or two of significance.
By the standards of even what the editor’s introduction terms “juvenilia,” this diary or memoir or notes on girls by the 14-year-old “Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald of St Paul Minn U.S.A.” is barely marginalia from a boyhood that had yet to turn literary. Though the afterword argues for literary significance in the dialogue, lists and some of the characters, readers will strain to unearth a glimmer of the fiction that would later flower in the tone of the manuscript (considerably shorter than the framing essays, even after padding with period photos). The book deals almost exclusively with what concerns most 14-year-old boys: girls—where he stands with them and they with him. Missing its first seven pages, the “Thoughtbook” has plenty of rankings of who likes whom and why. Early on, the boy writes, “I was more popular with girls than I have ever been befor” [sic—spelling is not his strong suit]. A few months later, “I have two new crushes, to wit—Margaret Armstrong and Marie Hersey. I have not decided which one I like the best. The 2nd is the prettiest. The 1st is the best talker.” Talk prevailed, as two weeks later he gushes, “I am just crazy about Margaret Armstrong and I have the most awful crush on her that ever was.” Elsewhere, Fitzgerald writes of being third in a girl’s ranking of affections but working his way toward first. Such rankings changed as often as the weather, and this “Thoughtbook” is like the weather report of budding romance.
Scholars could make use of this material, but it should otherwise interest only Fitzgerald completists.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-8166-7977-5
Page Count: 88
Publisher: Univ. of Minnesota
Review Posted Online: Aug. 5, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2013
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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