Specktor delivers interesting pieces of criticism, reporting, and self-help in this unique memoir, but the whole falls short.
Many people think we reveal more about ourselves by discussing favorite movies and music than when we talk about our own lives. Specktor tests that theory in his unusual new memoir.
The author, a founding editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books, tells the story of a difficult period of his life by writing about the creative people (and their work) that he was drawn to at the time. His picks serve to illuminate both his character and state of mind at the time, and they include actor Tuesday Weld, musician Warren Zevon, critic Renata Adler, and directors Hal Ashby and Michael Cimino, whom he tackles together. A skilled critic himself, Specktor offers useful context for some of his choices—e.g., explaining the work of husband-and-wife filmmaking team Frank and Eleanor Perry for today’s audience: “If The Swimmer was the fevered delirium of suburbia in decline—a noted inspiration, much later for the television series Mad Men—then Sue Kaufman’s Diary of a Mad Housewife was the chronicle of that decline from the inside out: Mad Men, if January Jones’s Betty Draper were the protagonist of that show, with her husband Don nothing but a condescending, insufferable satellite.” Specktor also explains how his admiration for Five Easy Pieces screenwriter Carole Eastman is wrapped in his conflicted thoughts of his screenwriter mother and his own stalled screenwriting career. Those personal moments are the strongest in the book—how Zevon’s music was the soundtrack to a painful family moment, how an ailing friend connected him to Weld’s work, how he idolized Thomas McGuane, whose work “cemented in place what had begun with Fitzgerald: my wish to strike sentences into being.” But whenever he reveals a bit of himself, Specktor quickly pulls back to the comfort of film history or deep descriptions of his Hollywood neighborhood.
Specktor delivers interesting pieces of criticism, reporting, and self-help in this unique memoir, but the whole falls short.Pub Date: July 27, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-951142-62-9
Page Count: 386
Publisher: Tin House
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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