A remembrance too idiosyncratically personal to resonate with a wide readership.
Paulk, an avid fisherman, recollects a lifetime of adventures in this memoir.
Growing up in Georgia during the Depression and World War II, the author was always an avid outdoorsman, drawn to hunting and fishing. Here, he collects more than a dozen stories that largely revolve around his fishing escapades, which took him from the rivers of his native Georgia to exotic locales including Kona (in Hawaii) and Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo and Cabo San Lucas (in Mexico). For 25 years, he maintained an offshore sportfishing boat, Kingfisher, and chased one massive fish after another. Each tale is conveyed with an infectious enthusiasm: “There’s nothing like a very successful fishing trip for me,” he writes. Some of Paulk’s triumphs are genuinely impressive—he once caught a striped marlin in Southern California that weighed in at an extraordinary 219.5 pounds. In addition to the accounts of fishing victories, the author also discusses his time attending the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland (during which he met his wife, Patricia Ann Metzler), his service as Navy officer, and his efforts to promote natural conservation, especially as a founding member of the United Anglers of Southern California. This is an eclectic assemblage of memories related in a casual, anecdotal style—the author makes no attempt to present a chronologically linear autobiography. Readers may get the feeling that they’re listening to the cheerful stories of an old friend, someone with a vital lust for life. While the collection focuses on fishing, Paulk also chronicles his personal life, most movingly when discussing the manner in which he met Pat. His devotion to her is consistently endearing: “I was so fortunate to be married to her for almost sixty years. Yep, this old Georgia boy married way over his head. She was a winner in life, if there ever was one. I love her so much!” This excerpt encapsulates what is best and worst about this memoir—while it’s unpretentiously lightsome and ebullient, it’s also brimming with earnest banalities and cliches. Readers may wish the author had taken a turn from the relentlessly wholesome to address something edgier, or more searchingly reflective, or had shown less restraint. (“Oh, the stories we could tell—but won’t!”)
Ultimately, this is a narrowly personal book, teeming with Paulk’s own photographs and stories that won’t resonate with those outside of the author’s social sphere. (The book includes a guest essay from an old friend of Paulk’s, Charlie Hall, and a meditation on a talented fisherman, George Washington Perry, whom the author knew as a child in Georgia.) Readers will likely feel that they’re perusing the scrapbook of a complete stranger, followed by reels of his home movies. Impressively, this experience never becomes an onerous one—Paulk is too charming a storyteller to exhaust readers’ patience completely. But the book is best suited to an audience of those who already know the author well, and who are eager to hear the telling and retelling of his recreational exploits.
A remembrance too idiosyncratically personal to resonate with a wide readership.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2023
ISBN: 9781665304160
Page Count: 207
Publisher: BookLogix
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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 juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
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