A simplistic attempt at hope in troubled times.
Another helping of pop philosophy from the prolific writer.
“Here we are, older, scared, numb on some days, enraged on others, with even less trust than we had a year ago,” Lamott writes of such challenges as the pandemic and threats to American democracy and to the planet in general. “Where on earth do we start to get our world and joy and hope and our faith in life itself back?” In these short essays, similar in style and tone as Almost Everything, Hallelujah Anyway, Small Victories, and the author’s other works of nonfiction, she ventures some answers. Mixed in with details of her personal life, including her first marriage (at age 65) to a man who, unlike her, is not a Christian; her struggles with alcoholism; and the Sunday school classes she teaches near her California home, the book addresses such topics as forgiveness, repentance, climate change, and more. Though the book will appeal to her longtime fans, the essays are marred by observations that are trite or just plain obvious. For example: “Maturity is retaining a modicum of grace when you do not get your own way”; “Growing up is hard”; “You make the plan but you don’t plan the result.” Other statements will be open to debate—e.g., “Darkness can be so soothing when you know it won’t last forever”; “Love is being with a person wherever they are, however they are acting.” It says something about this book that its best line is a misquote of Kurt Vonnegut, who, in a 1994 Syracuse University commencement speech, said he told his grandchildren (Lamott says it was his children) when they complained about the state of the planet, “Don’t look at me, I just got here myself.” For Lamott devotees, file alongside the aforementioned books; others can take a pass.
A simplistic attempt at hope in troubled times.Pub Date: March 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-18969-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
SEEN & HEARD
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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