Chast’s voice and vision make this a singular love letter to a singular city.
The highly regarded New Yorker cartoonist lets readers see the city she loves through her eyes.
As Chast (Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, 2014, etc.) notes early on, this isn’t a guidebook—though it could help Manhattan newcomers navigate the streets and the subways. The narrative is really about how an artist sees and how New York is such a treasure trove for the senses. “Maybe one day you will notice the amazing variety of standpipes,” writes the author on one of the pages illustrated with photos rather than drawings. “The more you notice them…the more you will see.” So it is with the rest of Manhattan, where there is so much to discover; even an artist with a sharp eye and a discerning sensibility can never come close to exhausting the inspiration. Chast explains that she left her native Brooklyn for suburbia for the usual family reasons—an affordable house, better schools, neighborhood safety—but that her love for the city has never diminished. She began this work “as a small booklet I made for my daughter before she left her home in Suburbia to attend college in Manhattan.” The result mixes some of the practical advice she must have offered her daughter with a bit of memoir and plenty of sociocultural observation (though she pays less attention to the city’s people than its resources and attractions). Chast makes development as an artist and her experience in the city seem inseparable. “I’ve always preferred cities to Nature,” she writes. “I am interested in the person-made. I like to watch and eavesdrop on people. And I really like DENSITY OF VISUAL INFORMATION.” Such density—and the details of visual information—consistently informs her work. The author also underscores the point that even Central Park, that leafy oasis that comprises 6 percent of the island, is actually man-made: “It contains lots of Nature, but is no more ‘natural’ than an arrangement of flowers from your neighborhood florist.”
Chast’s voice and vision make this a singular love letter to a singular city.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62040-321-1
Page Count: 168
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: July 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
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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