A masterful look at the wild life of an enigmatic artist that shows how captivating the truth can be.
A fresh biography of the Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright, actor, director, and screenwriter.
In Sam Shepard’s (1943-2017) world, everything is fodder to be twisted into one of his stories—including facts. In this fascinating biography of the larger-than-life theater legend, however, the focus is on keeping the facts straight, which is no small feat. Greenfield, a veteran music writer known for his biographies of the Rolling Stones, Jerry Garcia, and Timothy Leary, masterfully lets Shepard maintain his mythmaking, including his troubled childhood and run-ins with the law, but he balances it with outside corroboration. After he was arrested for DUI in Normal, Illinois, Shepard told the judge he got drunk with helicopter pilots involved in the conflict in Somalia captured in the movie Blackhawk Down, which included Shepard. He hoped he would receive a lighter sentence because of the military connection, but Greenfield writes that the sentence of two years of court supervision and suspended license “would most likely have happened even if he had not elected to commit perjury on the stand.” That kind of fact-finding serves readers well, whether they are interested in Shepard’s off-off-Broadway beginnings, his artistic process in celebrated works like Fool for Love, Buried Child, and True West, or his relationships with Patti Smith and Jessica Lange. Writing about the connection between Shepard and Smith, the author observes, “Completely at ease with one another, they seem to vibrate at an even higher frequency together than either of them could attain on their own.” Greenfield also injects useful real-world issues into the Shepard artistic myth, including how he took movie-acting roles to make money and would sell his letters and other personal papers to avoid debt. Impressively, the author accomplishes his biographical investigation without diminishing Shepard’s legacy as one of America’s greatest playwrights.
A masterful look at the wild life of an enigmatic artist that shows how captivating the truth can be.Pub Date: April 11, 2023
ISBN: 9780525575955
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
