A potent slice of social commentary and strategic advice on reclaiming valuable time and personal joy.
A filmmaker and producer maps out clear-cut methods to uncomplicate life, online and off.
The Covid-19 pandemic took a particularly devastating toll on Gambuto, as he struggled to find breathing room for six months while quarantining in his small Manhattan apartment. Furthermore, he was “tired of being tethered” to emails, auto-subscriptions, unfulfilling personal relationships, and compulsive purchases of unnecessary things. Building on his 2020 viral essay “Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting,” Gambuto seeks to help others declutter by investigating what has made levels of happiness and leisure time in America consistently plummet in the last few years. He cites relentless levels of commitments, agendas, voracious consumerism, and social treadmills as the main culprits, and he swiftly but informatively moves through the relentless mechanics of “click-up economics,” strategic branding, compulsive consumption, and the conundrum of corporations gaslighting a pandemic-weary public. As he emphasizes repeatedly, breaking free from these habits and hindrances takes steely determination. He offers a viable prescription of email unsubscribing, browser blocking, app downsizing, and embarking on a “digital detox,” and he also shows us how to renegotiate work or personal relationships. The author dispenses step-by-step instructions on how to effect change and distance oneself from automation and become resistant to the sly allure of advertising. Gambuto’s enthusiastic delivery and practical self-help tactics will remind readers that significant internal work is necessary to clear out the clutter, making room for beneficial relationships in real life and online. Witty and passionately written, the book shows that “there actually is time to process your life” once you eliminate seductive inbox offers, opt-in links, premium memberships, and toxic “people subscriptions.” It all starts with the “deeply gratifying” process of cutting the subscription cord and being wholly present for renewal with oneself and communion with others.
A potent slice of social commentary and strategic advice on reclaiming valuable time and personal joy.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2023
ISBN: 9781668009543
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
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
SEEN & HEARD
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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