An evocative consideration of the dualities of beauty and pain found both in nature and ourselves.
Muse, a park ranger, explores manhood, wanderlust, and the power of change in this debut memoir.
“Throughout my life, no matter where I’ve lived,” writes the author, “manhood has been a kind of topographic map”; social expectations have told him which paths he should take. Shortly after marrying his wife, the two worked on a household plumbing project—“Man’s work,” he joked at the time, knowing full well that his independent, self-sufficient wife “had been doing it for years.” Raised in a fatherless home in Indiana, Muse would spend much of his youth trying to find meaning in the great outdoors and models in the hyper-masculine heroes of 1970s pop culture. “Most of my memories,” he writes, are intertwined with the land, as he “loved maps before books.” Pursuing a career as a park ranger alongside his wife, Ranger Paula, the author moved from park to park throughout the United States, from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to the low-lying marshlands of Charleston, South Carolina. Much of the book focuses on how the author’s wanderlust connects to his childhood trauma and (mis)conceptions of manhood. He takes readers to Kentucky to explore his family’s ancestry and examines the connections between notions of masculinity and neo-Confederate white supremacy that still lingers in the Deep South. Other chapters blend personal anecdotes with appreciations of the beauty of America’s national parks. One chapter (“Subject: Advice for Tree Huggers”) offers guidance to would-be environmental activists, urging them to embrace their passion with pragmatic, sustainable strategies (“Follow your heart and bust your ass, though don’t expect fairness”). With postgraduate degrees in both science and creative writing, Muse blends his expertise in environmental science with a literary approach, offering poignant social commentary and striking descriptions of natural beauty. A subtheme that runs throughout the book is the wisdom of his wife, Ranger Paula, who serves as a guiding star in the author’s own journey to self-discovery.
An evocative consideration of the dualities of beauty and pain found both in nature and ourselves.Pub Date: May 9, 2023
ISBN: 9781956368529
Page Count: 244
Publisher: Wayfarer Books
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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