An absorbing story with a risky, genre-defying approach.
The life of a real-life forgotten entertainer and artist is recovered in MacBride’s biographical novel.
Merton Clive Cook (1868-1931), known in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as The Great Clivette, was a true Renaissance man who traveled around the world. He narrates this faux memoir, in which he describes himself as the companion of Arthur Conan Doyle, Harry Houdini, Buffalo Bill, and Mark Twain; indeed, he may have been the basis of “the Mysterious Stranger” in an unpublished Twain novel of the same name. Clivette worked at various intervals as a magician, tightrope walker, juggler, mime, lecturer, and painter. MacBride, a scholar of the late 1800s and early 1900s, found that Clivette was “strangely connected to everything in the entertainment world” around the turn of the century. Drawing on his collaboration with the Clivette family estate—which possesses a treasure trove of records, notes, clippings, and letters pertaining to its illustrious ancestor—MacBride offers the first book-length exploration of the artist’s life. As the author of more than a dozen books, from scholarly monographs and essays to SF novels and children’s books, MacBride has a history of experimenting with genres. This fictionalized work may alienate readers looking for a more traditional biography, and many may take exception with the narrator’s usage of problematic terms such as Indian. However, it effectively allows MacBride to bring Clivette’s larger-than-life persona, in all its self-aggrandizing hyperbole, to the fore. It’s also well balanced by a final chapter (“Fact from Fiction”) that parses out the accuracy of Clivette’s more “outlandish claims”; for example, Clivette’s meeting Twain is unconfirmed, but MacBride makes the case that their interaction was “likely.” Although the work lacks citations, the book does include a 12-page bibliography, and MacBride (who has a doctorate in 19th-century American literature) is careful to highlight gaps in the historical record. The book’s emphasis on engaging readers, in the impassioned, compelling spirit of Clivette himself, is reflected in its inclusion of more than 50 images, including posters and other ephemera, photos, and a gallery of Clivette’s art.
An absorbing story with a risky, genre-defying approach.Pub Date: June 8, 2023
ISBN: 9798987939314
Page Count: 170
Publisher: Salty Books Publishing Company, LLC
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 substantive, dishy, entertaining glimpse into Hollywood royalty.
The Oscar-winning actor and producer opens up about filmmaking, sex, drugs, and escaping his father’s shadow.
Despite its casual, just-shooting-the-breeze title, Douglas’ memoir is detailed and precision-engineered to entertain; as a filmmaker who won his first Oscar as a producer (for 1975’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), he knows a successful story needs clarity and conflict to work. The son of screen legend Kirk Douglas, he was well-acquainted with celebrity at an early age; witnessing his parents’ divorce, he spent much of his youth acting out. (He paid for college by selling weed by the suitcase-load.) After years of stalls and failures, he broke through on TV with the ’70s cop show The Streets of San Francisco. But small-screen work (along with his nepo-baby status) made breaking into big-screen roles harder until 1984’s Romancing the Stone made him a star and 1987’s Wall Street earned him a second Oscar. Douglas is candid about his industry struggles—like endless budget fights and betraying his father, who was promised the lead in Cuckoo’s Nest—and his reputation as a lothario. (Though married, he had an on-set affair with Kathleen Turner during Stone.) He’s also open about his alcohol and cocaine abuse, leading to a rehab stint, echoed in his son Cameron’s own struggles with addiction and recovery. He’s comfortable discussing controversies—the LGBTQ+ community’s protests of 1992’s Basic Instinct, his proto-MAGA character in 1993’s Falling Down—and plainly keeps an enemies list. But this story arc leaves him triumphant, with a loving wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones), his family, his health (after a cancer scare), and a late-career Emmy for playing Liberace in Behind the Candelabra (2013).
A substantive, dishy, entertaining glimpse into Hollywood royalty.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9781538782224
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
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