Through the obsession of such dedicated fans as Fishman, Connie Converse will find a larger audience.
In-depth biography of an obscure midcentury American musician who disappeared in 1974.
Early on in his debut book, New Yorker contributor Fishman, a musician himself, memorably describes his first encounter with Connie Converse (b. 1924), when he heard a recording at a party. “Contextually, I couldn’t place the song,” he writes. “It possessed the openhearted, melodic feel of an old Carter family recording, but there was also some gentle acoustic guitar fingerpicking…and harmonic movement….The traditional elements seemed so finely stitched together, with such a sophisticated sensibility, that the whole sounded absolutely original—modern, even. The song swallowed me. The party froze. The room disappeared.” This was the beginning of an evangelical obsession to learn everything about Converse. Over the years, Fishman wrote a play about her and performed her songs in concert, and he spent more than a decade researching and writing this book. The text’s power derives as much from the writer’s obsession as from Converse’s music. He compares her to a host of luminaries, including Bob Dylan, Dinah Shore, Hank Williams, Emily Dickinson, and Jack Kerouac. It’s astonishing how much he hears in her and how far he has been willing to go to learn more, whether tracking down folks in their 90s who might have experienced a performance or visiting places where her family lived decades ago. Fishman writes about tapes recorded in her New York kitchen—at a time when it wasn’t easy or common to do so—and in other unofficial venues. She never released a record or performed for a paying audience yet somehow made a morning TV appearance with Walter Cronkite. She later quit making music and vanished. Because so little is known about this private woman, Fishman is forced to engage in speculation about her influences, thoughts, and motivations, but his enthusiasm and diligence are infectious.
Through the obsession of such dedicated fans as Fishman, Connie Converse will find a larger audience.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9780593187364
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
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
A substantive, dishy, entertaining glimpse into Hollywood royalty.
The Oscar-winning actor and producer opens up about filmmaking, sex, drugs, and escaping his father’s shadow.
Despite its casual, just-shooting-the-breeze title, Douglas’ memoir is detailed and precision-engineered to entertain; as a filmmaker who won his first Oscar as a producer (for 1975’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), he knows a successful story needs clarity and conflict to work. The son of screen legend Kirk Douglas, he was well-acquainted with celebrity at an early age; witnessing his parents’ divorce, he spent much of his youth acting out. (He paid for college by selling weed by the suitcase-load.) After years of stalls and failures, he broke through on TV with the ’70s cop show The Streets of San Francisco. But small-screen work (along with his nepo-baby status) made breaking into big-screen roles harder until 1984’s Romancing the Stone made him a star and 1987’s Wall Street earned him a second Oscar. Douglas is candid about his industry struggles—like endless budget fights and betraying his father, who was promised the lead in Cuckoo’s Nest—and his reputation as a lothario. (Though married, he had an on-set affair with Kathleen Turner during Stone.) He’s also open about his alcohol and cocaine abuse, leading to a rehab stint, echoed in his son Cameron’s own struggles with addiction and recovery. He’s comfortable discussing controversies—the LGBTQ+ community’s protests of 1992’s Basic Instinct, his proto-MAGA character in 1993’s Falling Down—and plainly keeps an enemies list. But this story arc leaves him triumphant, with a loving wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones), his family, his health (after a cancer scare), and a late-career Emmy for playing Liberace in Behind the Candelabra (2013).
A substantive, dishy, entertaining glimpse into Hollywood royalty.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9781538782224
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
