Gracefully wrought essays imbued with a rare intimacy.
Astute observations on literature and art.
Poet, essayist, and biographer Crase, a MacArthur and Guggenheim fellow, has gathered more than 30 pieces published over the last 40 years that he describes as “affairs of attention and intellectual desire, rather than criticism.” Among those who merit his attention are poets John Ashbery, James Schuyler, Marianne Moore, and Lorine Niedecker; artists Fairfield Porter, Grace Hartigan, Larry Rivers, Eugene Leake, and Robert Dash; and Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose prescience and “persistent moral proximity” Crase roundly celebrates in several essays. Besides being appreciations, the pieces also serve as memoir and cultural history. Crase knew many of the individuals he writes about and was immersed in the communities in which they flourished. Crase met Ashbery, for example, when he was 28 and had not yet read the poet’s work. Needing someone to drive him around in upstate New York, Ashbery, then 45, enjoined Crase to serve as his chauffeur. “Our rides,” Crase recalls, “were exhilarating, not only for the miles we covered but because his conversation, so habitually casual and good natured, was also fearless. Each ride was a rolling preceptorial.” In some of the most affecting essays in the collection, Crase vibrantly delineates the friendships, affairs, collaborations, and financial infusions that made possible the New York School of poets and painters, centered on the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in Manhattan. The author offers a warm profile of British polymath Dwight Ripley, “linguist, poet, botanist, artist,” who became the gallery’s benevolent financial backer. An unusual involvement with an artist’s work came when Mark Milroy proposed to paint his portrait, a suggestion that at first inspired fear. “Portraits are aesthetically intensified perceptions,” Crase notes, “and intense perception makes people nervous.” Of the experience itself, Crase found that “being the object of Milroy’s perception, hours at a time, convinced me that the infamous ‘male gaze’ may be no fiction.”
Gracefully wrought essays imbued with a rare intimacy.Pub Date: May 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64362-143-2
Page Count: 344
Publisher: Nightboat Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
A raw but uneven narrative capturing Gen Z anxiety, though sometimes undermined by its attention-seeking impulses.
Young actor’s path from troubled youth to ascending Hollywood success.
In his provocative debut memoir, the emerging star behind memorable turns in The White Lotus and Euphoria delivers an engaging if somewhat disjointed portrait of coming-of-age trauma and Hollywood ambition. Gage vividly recounts his chaotic San Diego childhood—divorced parents, substance abuse, and a harrowing stint at a brutal rehab facility—with the kind of unflinching detail that will resonate powerfully with young adult readers navigating similar struggles. His voice feels most authentic when excavating family dysfunction and internal turmoil, capturing the emotional extremes and disconnection that define so much of adolescent experience. The memoir’s second half, chronicling his move to Los Angeles and emergence as an actor while grappling with his expanding sexual awareness and subsequent romantic relationships, feels less focused. Here, Gage’s self-aware attention-seeking—the book’s driving conceit—tips toward performative navel-gazing. His eventual borderline personality disorder diagnosis provides some clarity: “After my BPD diagnosis, I thought I’d discovered some profound epiphany about who I was and why I did the things that I did….I could finally see the patterns I’d been blind to before. Every relationship, the same cycle. Too fast, too deep, too reckless.” While Gage succeeds in chronicling the messy realities of mental health, addiction, and queer identity with refreshing honesty, his tendency toward calculated vulnerability can feel manufactured. The memoir works best as a snapshot of a particular generational moment—one in which therapy, social media, and celebrity culture collide in ways both illuminating and exhausting. Despite its inconsistent execution, Gage proves himself an effective and often entertaining storyteller, offering genuine insight into the psychological mechanics of family connection, fame seeking, and self-destruction that will resonate particularly with younger readers seeking meaning amid the noise.
A raw but uneven narrative capturing Gen Z anxiety, though sometimes undermined by its attention-seeking impulses.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781668080078
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
For the author’s fans.
A Fox News journalist and talk show host sets out to prove that she is not “an empty St. John suit in five-inch stiletto heels.”
The child of devout Christians, Minnesota native Carlson’s first love was music. She began playing violin at age 6 and quickly revealed that she was not only a prodigy, but also a little girl who thrived on pleasing audiences. Working with top teachers, she developed her art over the years. But by 16, Carlson began “chafing at [the] rigid, structured life” of a concert violinist–in-training and temporarily put music aside. At the urging of her mother, the high achiever set her sights on winning the Miss T.E.E.N. pageant, where she was first runner-up. College life at Stanford became yet another quest for perfection that led Carlson to admit it was “not attainable” after she earned a C in one class. At the end of her junior year and again at the urging of her mother, Carlson entered the 1989 Miss America pageant, which she would go on to win thanks to a brilliant violin performance. Dubbed the “smart Miss America,” Carlson struggled with pageant stereotypes as well as public perceptions of who she was. Being in the media spotlight every day during her reign, however, also helped her decide on a career in broadcast journalism. Yet success did not come easily. Sexual harassment dogged her, and many expressed skepticism about her abilities due to her pageant past. Even after she rose to national prominence, first as a CBS news broadcaster and then as a Fox talk show host, Carlson continued—and continues—to be labeled as “dumb or a bimbo.” Her history clearly demonstrates that she is neither. However, Carlson’s overly earnest tone, combined with her desire to show her Minnesota “niceness…in action,” as well as the existence of “abundant brain cells,” dampens the book’s impact.
For the author’s fans.Pub Date: June 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-525-42745-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
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