Fierce and informed riffs on current events and enduring challenges.
Essays, op-eds, and pop-culture pieces from the acclaimed novelist and memoirist.
The decision by the New York Times to hire Gay as an opinion writer in 2014 was a no-brainer: She has a gift for clean, well-ordered prose, and strong feelings on matters of race, gender, and sexuality. Most important, she possesses a fearlessness essential to doing the job right; though she can observe an issue from various angles, she never wrings her hands or delivers milquetoast commentaries. As she writes in the introduction, “On the page, I get to be the boldest, most audacious version of myself.” According to the author, police officers shouldn’t march in pride parades, and Louis C.K. isn’t owed a second chance. To Kill a Mockingbird is overrated, and Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who killed nine black churchgoers in 2015, doesn’t deserve the forgiveness the victims’ families gave him. Planted firmly on the left, Gay's thoughts on Trump, #metoo, and Black Lives Matter are predictable, but they are engaging in their ferocity all the same. That’s partly because she comes to her opinions more out of empathy than ideology, which is why she’s also served well as an advice columnist for the Times (a few examples of her columns are included). Like any op-ed writer, she sometimes contradicts herself. For example, a piece explaining her refusal to sign a petition condemning a TV show because “creators are allowed to make bad, irresponsible, problematic art” follows a piece arguing the Roseanne reboot shouldn’t have been made. Mostly, however, Gay is consistent, and the squishiness is relegated to puff pieces profiling Madonna, Janelle Monáe, Tessa Thompson, and others. The author may spit fire in her essays, but even she can’t penetrate the PR armor in which Nicki Minaj has encased herself.
Fierce and informed riffs on current events and enduring challenges.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2023
ISBN: 9780063341463
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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