An entertaining look back at a life in full.
Revisiting glossy days.
Carter navigates the path from his upbringing in rural Canada to founding Spy magazine, a delightfully snarky publication perhaps most famous for labeling Donald Trump (to his indignation) as a “shortfingered vulgarian,’’ fast-tracking to a long, successful run at the helm of Vanity Fair before moving on to his current gig with the digital publication Air Mail. But his subtitle gives the game away—Was the Vanity Fair era, a skillful amalgam of celebrity journalism and investigative reporting, really a “golden age” of magazine journalism? In this admittedly enjoyable account, it seems more like a product, however well executed, of affluent times, generous pre-internet advertisers, and aspirational readers eager to feel part of a world beyond their income levels or societal status. Carter’s odyssey, surprisingly, is most engrossing when he recounts surviving freezing winters and a stint as a railroad lineman before making his way to New York, that “shimmering vessel of opportunity and reward,” where, Gatsby-like, he begins to climb the greasy pole by talking his way into a stint at Time magazine. Bored by the stultifying culture of the newsweekly, he and a colleague, Kurt Andersen, hole up to create prototypes of Spy. “We wanted the voice,” he writes, “to be a mixture of Time-ese from the 1940s, with its dense, fact-filled writing, and the saucy manner of London’s Private Eye”—and Mad magazine. “We wanted to be outsiders on the ramparts picking off the big shots.’’ Mission accomplished. But as Spy’s financial fortunes foundered, Carter was wooed to take over Vanity Fair and join the Establishment, gaining more recognition from the VF Oscar Party than journalism, whose halcyon age was better exemplified by Harold Ross’ New Yorker or H.L. Mencken’s American Mercury. Curiously, Carter begins this memoir by reciting the “Deep Throat” scoop revealing Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s Watergate source. It’s solid reporting, but closer to gossip than lasting literary value. The going was good—but it appears to be gone.
An entertaining look back at a life in full.Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593655900
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
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