The best life of Berry in several years, though whether artist and art can be separated will be up to readers.
A capable warts-and-all biography of one of the founding fathers of rock ’n’ roll.
Chuck Berry (1926-2017), writes Smith, was a “lifelong tinkerer, one of the great American makers of the twentieth century” who “longed to build something big.” Even though he protested that rock had many origins, he was the great synthesizer, using his profound knowledge of many genres, including and perhaps especially country music, to blend them into a percussive, hip-moving new form. Berry was so knowledgeable a master of country music, then considered the sole province of White musicians, that he was able to correct Ernest Tubb on a rendering of Jimmie Rodgers. Tubb, at the center of traditional country, returned the favor by recording “a more reserved version of Berry’s “Thirty Days,” while everyone from Elvis to Marty Robbins to the Rolling Stones and the Beatles covered Berry as well. Widely admired by audiences White and Black and himself seemingly indifferent to race, Berry still had to endure Jim Crow racism and all that followed. He was even the subject of some resentment among other Black performers, Muddy Waters and Ike Turner among them, who at the time lacked his crossover appeal. Plenty of trouble dogged Berry, much of his own making, as when he transported a 14-year-old girl across state lines for, as the grand jury noted, “immoral purposes” and later videotaped women using the restroom of a restaurant he owned. Smith ventures a little psychoanalysis along the way (“He didn’t feel worthy in some basic sense”), but while dealing with some admittedly sordid and discomfiting matters, Smith always returns to the music, which, of course, was world-changing. On that note, Smith’s book is both a corrective and complement to Berry’s 1987 autobiography.
The best life of Berry in several years, though whether artist and art can be separated will be up to readers.Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-306-92163-6
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Hachette
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2022
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
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
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