A ranging, rich collage of memory and reflection.
In this lively memoir, a former gallerist reflects on a life of adventure and self-discovery.
Durham spent the bulk of her professional career running a reputable art gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Founded in 1978, Linda Durham Contemporary Art was a fixture of the Southwest arts scene for decades and “helped launch an innovative contemporary art market in Santa Fe.” But Durham contends the gallery’s impact extended far beyond the local; she writes that the gallery “also opened doors of opportunity and recognition for the vital New Mexico art scene through our participation in top-tier international art fairs.” Due to financial pressures and diminished interest, Durham decided to close the gallery. “I have run out of steam, money, and time,” Durham wrote in a 2011 journal entry. Durham uses the moment as a point of access to trace her journey through life. In short chapters, she looks back on various adventures—the first show she curated, New Mexico in Toronto, which featured work from Georgia O’Keeffe and Ken Price; a romp in Scotland; getting misled by a wealthy investor; a visit to the “tranquility and ornate splendor” of Myanmar; a long-anticipated voyage to Paris; the realization of the dream to travel around the world. Durham’s memoir is also full of childhood memories, such as the vivid scene of her father introducing her to a Mobius strip, a seismic moment for her: “That is where and when it all began, my fascination with connections, with circles and cycles, with beginnings, endings, and more beginnings.” Durham resists the urge to move linearly, and, instead, she organizes the book associatively, discursively. Tales of adventure and intimate reminiscences are punctuated by quotes from artists and writers, and Durham threads in excerpts from journal entries.
Durham’s strong, engaging voice overcomes any organizational qualms; the writing is dexterous enough to zoom in on specific moments and zoom out to consider broad, existential questions. She is careful not to present herself as someone who figured out all the answers; rather, the writer here is still willing and eager to ask the questions. Durham’s writing is often moving and honest. Here, she quotes one of her journal entries from 2012: “In my secret heart, I am beginning to embrace the notion that I am a pilgrim, that I have always been a lonely, dedicated seeker of something unnamed and not quite known.” Durham is an earnest writer, but she is not humorless, and she uses self-deprecating self-awareness to balance any existential heaviness. Despite the vibrant, diverse settings she explores on her international travels, and despite the self-discovery she gleans from these trips, the scenes set closer to home, in her beloved Southwest, are more revealing and more engaging. One of the book’s main achievements is its loving portrayal of Santa Fe, a town inextricably linked to the writer’s identity.
A ranging, rich collage of memory and reflection.Pub Date: Dec. 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-578-72293-1
Page Count: 252
Publisher: Mobius Pathways Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
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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