Devotees of the underground art and punk scenes of 1970s New York will devour Hannah’s journals, each page of which contains...
An intensely personal and engrossing portrait of a bygone era.
As Hannah states in the preface, his first book is “not a memoir,” but rather “journals, begun in 1970, at the age of seventeen, written as it happened, filled with youthful indiscretions.” As such, it benefits from an immediacy and exuberance that the hindsight, self-censorship, editing, and foggy recollections of a proper memoir would most certainly lack. The book begins rather unceremoniously with the author in high school in suburban Minneapolis; he was a budding artist and musician, precocious reader, and typical rebellious American teenager in search of drugs, sex, and kicks. He longed for big city nights far from his staid surroundings, and after a short tenure at Bard College, he landed in Greenwich Village in 1973 to attend Parsons School of Design. An avid partier and drinker in the right place at the right time, the author met and/or befriended a variety of the celebrities of the day, many of whom would go on to become legends (Patti Smith, Andy Warhol, David Bowie). Hannah's frequently poetic descriptions of his underground cohorts recall Genet’s parade of subversive heroes, and the author’s enthusiasm for la vie bohème and general disdain for the square world at times read like a cross between a glam-rock Kerouac and a stoned Holden Caulfield (in the best possible way). Along the way, readers receive all the lurid details of the author’s sex life—by turns romantic, erotic, dramatic, and hilarious—as well as a portrait of a young artist truly coming of age. Eventually, Hannah spent less time hanging out with rock stars and more time in his studio, culminating in his showing several works in the Times Square Show in 1980 alongside luminaries like Keith Haring and Jenny Holzer.
Devotees of the underground art and punk scenes of 1970s New York will devour Hannah’s journals, each page of which contains something fascinating or worthy of note—best enjoyed while listening to Bowie’s “Diamond Dogs,” Television’s “Marquee Moon,” and Patti Smith’s “Horses.”Pub Date: March 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-3339-1
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2017
IN THE NEWS
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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