An effusive outpouring of reflections on a traumatic time, most appealing to Ginsberg fans.
In the 1960s, the acclaimed poet saw America "teetering on the precipice of a fall."
Ginsberg biographer Schumacher, editor of the poet’s South American Journals and Iron Curtain Journals, now presents material that provides context for the National Book Award–winning volume The Fall of America (1973) as well as insight into Ginsberg’s creative process. Covering the period from 1965 to 1971, the journals contain “auto poesy” meant for publication, notebook entries, and transcriptions from tape recordings made on a reel-to-reel recorder gifted by Bob Dylan. Containing dreams, observations, political commentary, first drafts of poems, and travel writing, the journals document a turbulent period in American life—war, violent protest, assassinations—in addition to personal loss, including deaths of friends and an automobile accident that left Ginsberg hospitalized. He recalls in vivid detail dreams—sometimes erotic, often surreal—populated by a surprising cast of characters: Marianne Moore, Eleanor Roosevelt, and poet Mark Van Doren, his former teacher. Among encounters in real life, one of the most interesting is his extended visit to Ezra Pound in Italy in the fall of 1967. Ginsberg notes Pound’s “tiny pupils” and “silent calm” even when Ginsberg treated him to some popular music: “ ‘Eleanor Rigby,’ and ‘Yellow Submarine,’ and Dylan’s ‘Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands’ and ‘Gates of Eden’ and ‘Where Are You Tonight, Sweet Marie?’ and Donovan’s ‘Sunshine Superman.’ ” Prominent among Ginsberg’s entries are sharp political critiques: “The newspapers are full of lies / Just like President Johnson’s eyes,” he wrote in 1967. In 1968, he grieved, “Kennedys dead, King dead, / Malcolm X Assassinated, /Andy Warhol lingering in hospital spleen / shattered by tiny bullets.” In another entry, Ginsberg decries the nation’s “vast police networks” and bellicose foreign policy: “Our quote ‘defense of the free world’ is an aggressive hypocrisy that has changed the very planet’s chance of survival.”
An effusive outpouring of reflections on a traumatic time, most appealing to Ginsberg fans.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8166-9963-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Univ. of Minnesota
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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 frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
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