An uneven but sometimes-perceptive take on modern America.
A veteran author explores contemporary American culture and politics in this genre-bending anthology.
As the founder of the creative writing program at Arizona State University and author of multiple compilations of short stories and plays, Young is known for artistic experimentation. Here, he offers readers a commentary on contemporary politics and culture through multiple genres. The book begins with five essays, which include two memoiristic vignettes that center on two of the author’s five brothers. His youngest sibling, Gordon, is the only post–baby boomer of the bunch. Not only is there a 10-year generational difference between Gordon and the author, he notes, but there are also social and cultural differences in their approaches to life. Another essay centers on the failed publication Trips, a magazine published by the Banana Republic clothing chain. Dedicating itself to “re-vision[ing] our world,” the publication claimed to offer “authentic” stories that eschewed traditional travel writing to tout travel as “a great teacher” about the human condition. The fact that the magazine was discontinued after a single issue, Young writes insightfully, is related to its failed approach toward authenticity. Just as Banana Republic’s clothing boasts names of fictious organizations, such as the “Ivory Coast Safari Club,” American consumers, despite declarations otherwise, “don’t want ‘authentic’ immersion in a foreign culture,” Young asserts. The book’s second section, a collection of 15 poems, is similarly perceptive on topics that range from the value of cooperation to teenage Instagram culture. “Pandemic,” a poem centered on responses to Covid-19, satirically targets those who refused to wear a mask and submit to “the tyranny of evidence.”
As strong as the book’s first half is, its second half falls flat. The third section offers readers a sampling of five short plays, most of which are based on conversations between a carefully selected demographic selection of Americans that borders on stereotype. One play, for instance, features a group of Black and Hispanic young men on an outdoor basketball court in Los Angeles who seek to “enlighten” a 50-year-old white player wearing a Hoosiers T-shirt. Although there’s potential for constructive interracial discourse in this scene, the interchange is stilted with political tropes and, cringingly, a biracial character’s use of the “hard R” in his pronunciation of a racial epithet. The book’s final section (“The Big Lie”) deploys similarly forced, unnatural dialogue in its characters’ conversations about Donald Trump. In a book that’s fewer than 175 pages in length, the plays suffer from excessive brevity and a lack of character development. What detracts from the anthology’s fictional writings, though, enhances its poetry; one of the book’s most powerful pieces is a two-line poem (“Boycott”) on Chinese foreign policy: “Hong Kong is gone. / Save Taiwan.” The book could have used an introductory or concluding chapter to ease readers into the rationale behind its eclectic approach as well as introduce themes that connect the sections. The abrupt transitions between genres without editorial commentary makes for a disjointed read that takes away from the book’s often insightful musings.
An uneven but sometimes-perceptive take on modern America.Pub Date: March 31, 2023
ISBN: 978-1734423679
Page Count: 177
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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