Art isn’t easy, as this entertaining look at the making of a cultural touchstone amply demonstrates.
Conversations with the creators of a landmark American musical.
Lapine was “an accident of the theater,” an Ohio native whose first Broadway experience was the time when, at age 11, his parents took him to Bye Bye Birdie and he clumsily thrust his souvenir program at star Dick Van Dyke and gave him a paper cut on the nose. He had intended to pursue a career in photography, but he became an off-Broadway playwright, work that attracted the interest of Stephen Sondheim. Their first collaboration, Lapine’s debut as a writer/director, was Sunday in the Park With George (1984), a musical inspired by Georges Seurat’s pointillist painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. This delightful book revisits the two years they spent telling a fictionalized version of Seurat’s life. Lapine conducted conversations with around 40 people involved with the show to create “a mixed salad: one part memoir, one part oral history, one part ‘how a musical gets written and produced.’ ” Among the participants are Sondheim, stars Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters, and musical director Paul Gemignani. The result sometimes feels like a mutual admiration society, with the casting director saying Sondheim was “incredibly generous to all of us,” Lapine saying how much he learned from Peters and Patinkin, and so on. But fans will find much to love, including the complete text of Lapine’s script and Sondheim’s lyrics and reproductions of handwritten notes, sheet music, drawings of costumes, and more. A highlight is the long section in which Sondheim describes his process of composing a song. The author is refreshingly candid about his role in his actors’ frustrations—a continuation of his childhood clumsiness—as when he told cast member Brent Spiner, “You’re not a character, you’re a color,” to which Spiner replied, “Would you mind telling me what color?” As Lapine admits, “I wasn’t the most popular guy in the room.”
Art isn’t easy, as this entertaining look at the making of a cultural touchstone amply demonstrates.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-374-20009-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
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
Inspiring, proactive, and frank advice on overcoming failure with humility.
A universal pep-talk on spinning failures into positives.
Through motivating chapters about lessons learned through his years of experience, Grammy Award–winning music producer, songwriter, and record executive blanco sets a course for success based on a core set of personal principles. The author believes that everyone is a failure but that those failures are “officially the most interesting thing” about people since it increases our desire to strive for excellence and moments of triumph. He writes that ego is often at fault for making failure look like a permanent condition, when, to him, it “gives the journey meaning” and encourages us to continue. He cites his own defeats and successes, beginning as a kid battling ADHD and OCD; then immersing himself in the precarious recording industry, writing and producing songs for superstars (among them Britney Spears, Justin Bieber, and Ed Sheeran); collaborating with Max Martin and Dr. Luke; and reinventing himself through the production of a cookbook. He also writes about the career “cold streaks that made it feel like I had no choice but to pack it up,” as when he drove cross country to work on a Katy Perry album that had already been completed by the time he’d reached Los Angeles. Prioritization is key, blanco stresses, and urges everyone to find a mentor for career as well as moral direction and to optimize goals while creating opportunities (even smaller ones) through the hustle of hard work. He also shares lists on how to get noticed in the music industry and how to harness the power of healthy relationships. Overcoming and “having amnesia about failure” sets each of us up for success and happiness, he writes, as he delivers a series of more obvious life hacks like persistence, patience, being kind, avoiding unnecessary conflict, and establishing (and adhering to) a routine. With conversational, practical, and musical career-derived advice wrapped in a gritty, tough-love exterior, blanco implores each of us to believe in our own potential for success.
Inspiring, proactive, and frank advice on overcoming failure with humility.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781668205242
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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