A shrewd examination of fame, fortune, and love by a literary giant.
A new volume of Nin’s prolific diaries reveals the last obsession of her life: her public image.
Despite dying nearly 47 years ago, the erotic writer and archetypal diarist Anaïs Nin still has more to say. Her seminal diaries were not published until 1966, a decade before her death from cervical cancer, and started from 1931, so readers have always come to her story in media res. This final volume, edited by Herron, recounts her life post-diaries publication, transformed by both fame and illness. “No later than the 1930s Nin believed that the record of her life as presented in the journal merited publication,” writes Franklin in the book’s introduction, but “these texts raise questions they do not answer.” Here Herron provides, if not answers, some scaffolding upon which to hang an assessment of an interiority tailored and revised for public consumption. These are not the ribald chronicles of her earlier works; rather, readers see Nin contending with how the wider world receives her work, and thus her. The text includes letters between Nin and her agent, Gunther Stuhlmann, over payments and scheduling and tender exchanges with her first husband, Hugh Guiler, as well as missives from various literary admirers from across the globe. June and Henry Miller make appearances, but the most engrossing sections deal with Nin’s conception of herself as both public figure and product: “Everyone wants to see me…they need to know I am real—that I am my work. When I tell them it is all in the work they do not quite accept that; I think I am withdrawing from public life because it focuses entirely on an idealized Anaïs.” Nin obscures her worsening health—her cancer, glibly announced with “Kaiser gives diagnosis of cancer,” was detected in 1970 but remains largely unaddressed until the final years of her life. Nin’s greatest fear was to be parted from all the love she had accumulated—if only readers of today, decades removed, could reassure her that, to them, she remains very much alive.
A shrewd examination of fame, fortune, and love by a literary giant.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2023
ISBN: 9781735745954
Page Count: 375
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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