A detailed explication of a vital artistic and cultural concept.
An exploration of the meanings, purposes, and limits of improvisation in life, art, and politics.
Fertel is a writer, public intellectual, and philanthropist who heads the New Orleans–based Fertel Foundation, which supports projects involving art, education, and food culture, and the Ruth U. Fertel Foundation, which supports education in Louisiana. In these pages, heoffers a tour de force exploration of improvisation and its many uses, beginning with what most people would associate with “improv”: a distinctive form of theater perfected by Chicago’s Second City troupe. But the author then demonstrates how the concept of improvisation touches many other areas of life and society and has immense creative and destructive potential—and he goes on to show why the latter is especially salient in today’s political climate. Indeed, for Fertel, one of the most significant applications of improvisation is in the political arena, where it has the most potential and is the most perilous. While explaining the dark places that former President Donald Trump takes improvisation, Fertel suggests that “his improvising gave him the authority to break norms (and laws).” The author begins his book with the concepts of “cold cognition” (which neuroscientists call the “rational mind”) and “hot cognition” (a term for the “intuitive mind”), and he gradually brings out why both aspects are essential. He also invokes the Greek mythological origins of these ideas, as well as the cross-cultural archetype of the Trickster, and applies these notions to a variety of disciplines, including vaccine development, jazz and hip-hop, and the visual arts. Overall, this is a challenging work that requires readers to absorb complex concepts right at the beginning, and lay readers may find some of its explorations to be easier to grasp than others. Ultimately, though, this is a thoughtful and accessible look at how and why improvisation goes far beyond the stage, and why its power should not be underestimated.
A detailed explication of a vital artistic and cultural concept.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780882141589
Page Count: 246
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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