Enthusiastic and chockablock with varied examples but tightly bound by the ropes of convention.
A self-help book for those who yearn to be story writers.
Rubin has considerable experience in this arena—a graduate of the Yale School of Drama, he is the founder of the writing studio Story 27 and has written for TV and theater—but little is novel here. He writes in conventional self-help format (chapters with identical subheadings, bullet points, continual encouragement) and employs informal diction throughout, including the final sentence: “You got this.” In one of the major sections, “How the Master Did It,” the author summarizes, sometimes quite extensively, a salmagundi of works including computer games, songs, short stories, novels, plays, films, TV scripts, and comic books. Among the many iconic authors Rubin cites are Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, James Baldwin, Arthur Miller, and Toni Morrison as well as more current artists such as Quentin Tarantino and Tina Fey. Rubin’s point, well taken, is that great stories are similar in foundational ways, and he devotes most of the text to showing novices how to become adepts, if not maestros. The 27 chapters, introduced by quotes from the likes of Aristotle, Voltaire, Buddha, and others, are arranged into large themes—plot, character, setting, dialogue, etc.—and each has an urgent and/or encouraging title: “Drop the Hammer,” “Escalate Risk,” “Hunt Big Game,” “Peel the Onion,” “Confront Evil.” The prose is readable yet sprinkled with cliché (“getting into the appropriate mindset”) and platitude (“the more you do something, the better you get at it”). Rubin does display a wide range of reading, but he does not delve into language, mechanics, usage, ways to write a character’s thoughts, and so on. Maybe another volume is on the way? The author remains positive and encouraging throughout, but as most aspiring writers know, success is highly elusive.
Enthusiastic and chockablock with varied examples but tightly bound by the ropes of convention.Pub Date: July 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5235-0716-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Workman
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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
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