Dense and definitive—best appreciated with a record player handy.
A comprehensive chronicle of the jazz legend’s life.
The name Thelonious Monk (1917–1982) has long been surrounded by a kind of tragic mystique. Few question his unparalleled talent, but the taint of mental illness has cast him as a bit of an outsider. With this encyclopedic portrait, Kelley (History and American Studies and Ethnicity/Univ. of Southern California; Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, 2002, etc.) attempts to correct the many misconceptions, both personal and musical, that haunted Monk throughout his life and attended his image in the press. To combat the charge that Monk had no formal training and no knowledge of classical music, the author offers numerous examples from his childhood and teen years, when he rattled off Rachmaninoff at top speed. Kelley’s anecdotes show a humorous, generous and outspoken man who was beloved by family and friends—almost the opposite of the brooding, quizzical persona with which he greeted the press. From his formative years in the fertile soil of 1930s Harlem, Monk was a New Yorker through and through. He struggled to rise from penury and play his music for audiences that didn’t really understand his “weird” chord progressions and unique rhythms. Eventually he achieved the recognition he deserved, though his rise to success was long and difficult. At the height of his career, mental illness plagued him everywhere but at the piano. Written with the full cooperation of Monk’s wife, there can be little doubt that Kelley gets the facts straight. He includes plenty of firsthand accounts from those who knew the musician best, and his actions are meticulously recorded. However, few of Monk’s own words make it onto the pages, and the author does not attempt to devise overarching themes from his experiences. Ultimately the subject remains elusive. The degree of detail in this straight-ahead biography makes it unsuitable for the casual fan, but jazz aficionados will cherish it.
Dense and definitive—best appreciated with a record player handy.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-684-83190-9
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2009
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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