A short account that paints a thorough and vivid portrait of one man’s American life.
A memoir chronicles a teacher’s youth in the Midwest and his struggles as an adult.
Debut author Baxter was born in 1948 in Kansas. His childhood was a happy one, thanks in no small part to his grandmother Younkin. Grandma was a retired English teacher with a fondness for literature, rocking chairs, and canasta. The book encompasses a number of vignettes from the author’s younger days, including the time in 1956 that his father caught him stealing hubcaps from car tires and how in 1965 he participated in a prank involving potassium from a chemistry class. He met his wife as a freshman at the University of Kansas. He eventually decided to follow in the footsteps of his grandmother and became a high school English teacher. The career path was not always easy. The author learned the hard way that his own love of books would not carry over to his students through “osmosis.” Recollections from the author’s adult years become more fraught. He writes of how, in retrospect, he always felt a separation from his mother, asserting: “I know I was loved, but it was from a distance.” He became overweight. At one of his children’s soccer games, a man in a NASCAR hat called him “fatty.” He explained to his therapist that he had the feeling of a kind of black hole overtaking him. And then there was the death of his first son, Jordan, in infancy. The author explains how “the memory of Jordan’s short life still fills my eyes with a juxtaposition of smiles and tears.” It is just such a juxtaposition that is at the heart of this slender volume (under 100 pages). The book consists of chapters that are rarely more than a few pages long. Readers get an inkling of some of Baxter’s worst and best times without too much lingering on either category. The outcome is certainly a breezy read, though some points could have used greater elaboration. For instance, the author mentions being a teacher in 1999 at the time of the Columbine High School shootings. Although the senselessness of the event disturbed him in obvious ways, it would have been informative to learn more. What was the discussion like in his workplace? What did he tell his students? Were his fellow teachers worried? Nevertheless, the memoir’s brevity is also a wonderful asset. No words are wasted on complicated family origin stories, minor triumphs that do not translate well on the page (for example, a promotion at work), or other miscellaneous events that would be of limited interest to readers. The audience is instead given choice segments of Baxter’s very personal experiences. The author points out that “humanity resides in minute details,” and it is just such specifics that fill the pages without overburdening them.
A short account that paints a thorough and vivid portrait of one man’s American life.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4809-5001-6
Page Count: 86
Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Co.
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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