Not a great read, then, but fans may be interested.
The life of the actor, best known for his starring role in the long-running sitcom Benson.
The illegitimate son of an abused and emotionally unstable mother, Robert Guillaume was born in 1927 in St. Louis, where he grew up in poverty, raised mostly by his grandmother, a cleaning woman, and got his first taste of performing by singing in the church choir. He’d had a successful career as a stage actor, singer, and comedian, most notably in the revue Jacques Brel Is Alive and Living in Paris, before being offered the part of Benson, the sharp-tongued butler on the comedy Soap, for which he won an Emmy in 1979. The character was later spun off into his own series, which ran for seven seasons on ABC, from 1979 to 1986. When Benson went off the air, Guillaume continued to work steadily, appearing in several short-lived television series and starring in the title role of the Los Angeles production of The Phantom of the Opera. His career almost came to a halt in 1999 when he suffered a minor stroke on the set of the critically acclaimed “dramedy” Sports Night (on which he played producer Isaac Jaffee), an incident that was put into the show’s plotline to avoid writing out the character. Since then the actor has been slowly recovering—hence the reflective mood this autobiography finds him in. Although he’s endured more than his share of hardship—the poverty and racial discrimination of his youth, his stroke, the death of his son Jacques from AIDS—he doesn’t succumb to hand-wringing, and while the prose is often stilted, and the pacing somewhat uneven, he comes across as serious about his craft and candid about the mistakes he’s made along the way.
Not a great read, then, but fans may be interested.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-8262-1426-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Univ. of Missouri
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2002
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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