Great American photography in a welcome new frame.
A fresh, scholarly look—complete with more than 200 images—at the seminal American photographer, this time through the lens of fine art and literature.
In a lavishly illustrated narrative bolstered by impassioned research, art historian Alpers reintroduces readers to Walker Evans (1903-1975), one of America’s great artistic observers. Evans began his career dreaming of becoming an expat writer like those of the Lost Generation, and Alpers finds a literary core at the center of his creative makeup. In addition to “having an eye” for photography, Evans was a storyteller and a ruthless editor of his own work. He was meticulous about word choice in his writing and public speaking; in his photography, he tirelessly revised, endlessly searching for the perfect crop. Evans was an avid reader, and Alpers turns to books to unlock his oeuvre (Flaubert looms large). She similarly mines the realm of art history but occasionally reaches too far: After astutely likening the documentarian nature of her subject’s undeveloped rolls to a painter’s plein-air sketchbook, she goes on to compare Evans to Paul Cézanne and his many graphite studies. Elsewhere, she connects Evans to Edward Hopper, but “coming as I do from historic European art, the horizontal, two-page composition reminds me of a fifteenth-century Italian predella panel.” Alpers periodically touches on Evans’ well-documented commercial projects—e.g., Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, his celebrated collaboration with James Agee—but primarily searches for new ways to understand Evans’ work as a whole. She resists seeing his work as nostalgic; quoting Evans, she explains that he was “interested in what any present time will look like as the past.” Recalling critic Clement Greenberg, Evans saw photography as “the most literary of the graphic arts,” and Alpers convincingly presents him as a new kind of poet: “a photographer inventing a new language of images for America.”
Great American photography in a welcome new frame.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-691-19587-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Basketball fans will enjoy Pippen’s bird’s-eye view of some of the sport’s greatest contests.
The Chicago Bulls stalwart tells all—and then some.
Hall of Famer Pippen opens with a long complaint: Yes, he’s a legend, but he got short shrift in the ESPN documentary about Michael Jordan and the Bulls, The Last Dance. Given that Jordan emerges as someone not quite friend enough to qualify as a frenemy, even though teammates for many years, the maltreatment is understandable. This book, Pippen allows, is his retort to a man who “was determined to prove to the current generation of fans that he was larger-than-life during his day—and still larger than LeBron James, the player many consider his equal, if not superior.” Coming from a hardscrabble little town in Arkansas and playing for a small college, Pippen enjoyed an unlikely rise to NBA stardom. He played alongside and against some of the greats, of whom he writes appreciatively (even Jordan). Readers will gain insight into the lives of characters such as Dennis Rodman, who “possessed an unbelievable basketball IQ,” and into the behind-the-scenes work that led to the Bulls dynasty, which ended only because, Pippen charges, the team’s management was so inept. Looking back on his early years, Pippen advocates paying college athletes. “Don’t give me any of that holier-than-thou student-athlete nonsense,” he writes. “These young men—and women—are athletes first, not students, and make up the labor that generates fortunes for their schools. They are, for lack of a better term, slaves.” The author also writes evenhandedly of the world outside basketball: “No matter how many championships I have won, and millions I have earned, I never forget the color of my skin and that some people in this world hate me just because of that.” Overall, the memoir is closely observed and uncommonly modest, given Pippen’s many successes, and it moves as swiftly as a playoff game.
Basketball fans will enjoy Pippen’s bird’s-eye view of some of the sport’s greatest contests.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-982165-19-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
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