Readers will emerge with a deeper understanding of the roots of Shepard’s plays, and of an endlessly complex man.
A sturdy, revealing biography of the playwright, actor, and musician Sam Shepard.
“Sam Shepard,” an acquaintance once observed, “was a ‘sworn enemy of stasis.’” Raised by an alcoholic, abusive father and a patiently encouraging mother, he grew up in the Mojave Desert, a place he called “just a dead end.” As Shepard scholar Dowling notes, that background shaped Shepard’s plays, in which characters “crash around in this space for a while making a certain kind of rough music and then disappear again.” An intelligent interpreter of Shepard’s work, Dowling blends lightly worn literary criticism with plenty of dish, for Shepard lived a rough-music, messy life. His title, for one, comes from Joni Mitchell’s song of the same name, written in the aftermath of a brief fling while on Bob Dylan’s storied Rolling Thunder Revue in 1975. Shepard was just coming off of a relationship with the emerging rock star Patti Smith, whom he met while he was playing drums for the psychedelic jug band called the Holy Modal Rounders (having previously played in a band presciently called Heavy Metal Kid). Said musician T-Bone Burnett, also on the Dylan tour, “Sam Shepard is an incredible drummer, among other things….If you take rhythm out of his plays, there’s nothing left.” Those plays, of course, are now classics—True West, Fool for Love, A Lie of the Mind, the list goes on—often with characters who are brothers in conflict, about which Dowling sagely remarks, “The bipolar nature that’s reflected in his work was very much represented in the man.” Shepard’s own personal inconstancy and unrelenting angst can be attributed in part to his reliance on alcohol and, in his younger years, drugs (he kept up with Keith Richards, after all), and in part to a restlessness that kept him on the move over a long, productive, but always troubled life.
Readers will emerge with a deeper understanding of the roots of Shepard’s plays, and of an endlessly complex man.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781501195730
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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 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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
