A thoughtful telling of Roth’s literary life, shorn of sensationalism, by a leading historian of Jewish culture.
The life of a self-described “unchaste monk.”
In 1969, the Washington Post predicted that, for a long time, “we will judge our friends by what they say” about Philip Roth’s novel Portnoy’s Complaint. Roth’s fortunes have oscillated over the past half-century, and Zipperstein’s well-modulated and immensely erudite biography of Roth charts the sine wave of his reputation. A scholar at Stanford University, Zipperstein tells the story of a writer through his books—a feat possible because Roth figured himself and his acquaintances through the many personae of his fictions. Against these representations, Zipperstein arrays a range of documents, interviews, personal encounters, and literary criticism. Roth emerges here less as the magnificently libidinous creature of Blake Bailey’s flamboyant (and discredited) biography than as a writer of social intellectualism. Roth’s major questions are those of this book: What is the place of the immigrant in American society; how does the literature of the past shape our behavior in the present; is there a moral center to modern life; how does the writer draw on personal experience to create vivid character? Zipperstein’s Roth is a writer largely concerned with the books he has read, and a high point of this biography is the sensitive reading of The Ghost Writer as a book about the books that make us. Zipperstein does not shy away from chronicling Roth’s escapades and transgressions. And he does not shy away from calling out the good (Portnoy’s Complaint, The Ghost Writer, The Plot Against America), the bad (When She Was Good, The Professor of Desire), and the simply god-awful (The Breast). Written with measured, scholarly detachment and rich with original research, this biography will introduce Roth to new readers as one of the great prose stylists of the 20th century and one of the most influential voices in shaping American Jewish identity.
A thoughtful telling of Roth’s literary life, shorn of sensationalism, by a leading historian of Jewish culture.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9780300251555
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 28, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
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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