An ambitious, strange psychodrama for fans of chimerical nonfiction odysseys.
A creative writing professor’s memoir about coming to terms with his father’s impending death.
With his father on his deathbed, Kirk couldn’t bear to face the inevitable. They had a troubled relationship, and, as much as the author tried to distinguish himself from his minister father, who “only showed me how to put on the spectacle of holiness,” he fears that they are too much the same. While his father had issues with alcohol, Kirk’s own struggles were worse, with other substances intensifying the effects of the booze—and rendering him an unreliable narrator. The author also suspects that he, like his father, is something of a hypocrite, a charlatan at his own chosen altar of journalism. “It was almost as if I’d been suddenly deprogrammed from a faulty cult of my own making,” he writes. “That cult having something to do with the rigors of my trade….I had developed an acute allergy to experience itself.” Nevertheless, Kirk dove into a piece of long-form investigative journalism involving Hungarian composer Béla Bartók and a missing musical manuscript. The author’s quest took him from archives and a series of locations in his native Northeast to Transylvania, where the composer first heard the folk music that would subsequently inform his own work. All of this builds to a delirious vision of Kirk’s father’s being torn apart while, in fact, the Bartók story seems to be deteriorating: “The trail has gone cold. I’ll never know any more than this.” His half-baked account subsequently finds him embarking on a wilder adventure to the Arctic Circle, toward the heart of darkness in the eternal sunlight, without much of an epiphany or resolution. While some readers may applaud the author’s approach—essentially, writing around a topic that is difficult to explore—as audacious and psychologically harrowing, many will find the work required for the payoff to be too arduous.
An ambitious, strange psychodrama for fans of chimerical nonfiction odysseys.Pub Date: July 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-235617-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Perennial/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
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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