A stimulating, eclectic collection of essays.
A dramatist, dancer, musician, and critic reflectson her career, America, and world affairs in this essay anthology.
Active in some of America’s most cutting-edge dance and theater circles (including Greenwich Village’s Judson Dance Theater) for more than half a century, Blank has established herself as an educator, observer, and critic of the stage. In this collection of two dozen essays, she blends memoir vignettes with sociocultural commentary on topics that range from American history to Jewish-Palestinian relations. The book opens with a dialogue between the author and her partner, acclaimed author Ishmael Reed, as she recalls highlights from her life as a public intellectual. This conversation provides a behind-the-scenes look at the life of the dramatist and dancer, including her collaborations with Reed and others from the 1960s on multidisciplinary performance productions. She also discusses her artistic inspirations, such as dancer Martha Graham, who visited Blank’s hometown of Pittsburgh during the author’s youth. Other essays cover topics like postmodernism and abstract art (she challenges Eurocentric narratives that suggest abstraction began in the 20th century, invented by disaffected white men). Blank is particularly keen on tackling American mythmaking that centers the powerful; many of her historical essays offer fresh perspectives on topics from the Spanish influence on colonial America to her chapter-length analysis of the Black musical tradition that influenced Elvis Presley (“It’s the critics who claim that these White musicians have somehow transcended the efforts of those who inspired them”). The book’s titular essay reflects on Blank’s experience as a Jew living in the West Bank Palestinian city of Ramallah as viewed through the prism of the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks. The text includes reproductions of her email correspondence that provide an honest, intimate look at her experiences. Blank is unafraid to challenge prevailing norms that center white men, but she is more than just a polemicist in her well-formed, convincing, intellectual critiques. Those interested in the post–World War II counterculture and avant-garde art scene will appreciate this insider’s account that blends memoir with intellectually rigorous commentary.
A stimulating, eclectic collection of essays.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9781771863568
Page Count: 220
Publisher: Baraka Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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