A resilient memoir of disease, recovery, and humbling catharsis.
The son of an iconic author chronicles his descent into dependency.
Matthiessen (1953-2022), the son of Peter Matthiessen, was born in Paris, surrounded by his father’s clique of literary bohemians and expectations to live up to the esteemed family name. When his parents divorced in 1956, Matthiessen volleyed between their culturally significant social circles but ended up relocating with his mother to New York. His home life devolved as his mother struggled with alcoholism, and he attended boarding school not for the experience but to “remove me from the chaos.” In smooth, crisply vivid prose, Matthiessen describes his time at Columbia studying English literature, during which he entertained a series of misguided trysts with one of his father’s old flames and was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative eye disease inherited from his mother that would slowly rob him of his sight. By age 35, the condition severely hampered his lofty ambitions of continuing the family authorial tradition, but he soldiered on and accompanied his father on humanitarian trips to Tibet and Africa. The author often reflects back to his youth in the shadow of his famous father, his Zen Buddhist teachings, and their bonding experiences. He also elaborates on his romanticized perspective of alcohol as the “magical elixir that helped me feel comfortable in the world, a sensation for which I would eventually sacrifice almost anything.” Matthiessen bracingly articulates his adult years spent drinking, almost as a sullen distraction from accepting the deterioration of his eyesight. Alcoholism destroyed his personal life with his wife, who also drank heavily, and working relationships as an editor at the Paris Review and Penguin Books. As his eyesight continued to decline and he committed to rehab, Matthiessen abandoned his literary career in favor of pursuing social work at substance abuse rehabilitation centers. Though hobbled by an inconsistent timeline, the text is an engrossing, emotional confessional made even more poignant by the author’s death from cancer at the age of 69.
A resilient memoir of disease, recovery, and humbling catharsis.Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-956763-31-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.
An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.
Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781668211656
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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