If you have a hipster’s need to drink your way through film history in the footsteps of Bogey and Bacall or just want to hit...
A toper’s guide to booze and its discontents in the film mecca that is Los Angeles.
Sure, Bogart drank—and W.C. Fields and Jackie Gleason, by the gallon. But Clara Bow, Mary Pickford, Veronica Lake? Yep, they swilled alcohol as if there were no tomorrow and no consequence—and, at times, as if there were no laws against it. Screenwriter Bailey and artist Hemingway (Hemingway & Bailey's Bartending Guide to Great American Writers, 2006) team up to profile some of Tinseltown’s most notorious drinkers (and a few secret tipplers as well), along with the watering holes they favored, from the Polo Lounge to Ciro’s and a few lesser-known saloons in less fashionable districts. They write in the same style that fuels such tell-alls as Hollywood Babylon and Mommy Dearest: Sure, Errol Flynn often played a scamp, but who knew that he was so downright awful in real life? Unfortunately, Bailey brings too little new information to the table, though when he does, it’s a revelation. The packaging, too, is pleasant enough, with its abundant sidebars, recipes—if you’re going to read the book, you might as well learn how to make simple syrup, as well—and caricatures. Bailey’s yarns, lasting about a beer apiece, are engaging enough as well and sometimes shocking to boot—it rattles our image of the man, for instance, to learn that sweet Stan Laurel, a constant drunk who put down “a ton of whiskey,” once threatened to bury his wife alive. Overall, the book is pleasantly enjoyable but dispensable.
If you have a hipster’s need to drink your way through film history in the footsteps of Bogey and Bacall or just want to hit all of LA’s historic hotspots or perhaps are just taking your liver out for a thorough road test under the swaying palms, then this is your vade mecum. Otherwise, stick to Kenneth Anger or maybe Barton Fink.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-56512-593-3
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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