A sincere but uneven work for those weathering a crisis.
In this memoir/self-help book, a songwriter seeks to console and inspire readers.
In 1990, Friedman wrote a song called “Help Is on the Way,” performed by Nancy LaMott, about remaining hopeful even in times of difficulty. It would eventually become one of the anthems of the AIDS crisis. With this book, the author hopes to replicate that feat, offering a mix of stories, affirmations, and inspirational quotes to buoy those in need of a lift. Some of the wide-ranging tales come from Friedman’s personal life: his family history, his childhood, and his long career on Broadway and as a fixture of New York City’s cabaret scene. There was the time his father borrowed money from relatives to buy his own paint factory. “Talk about Help Is on the Way,” the author jokes, “almost everyone he asked contributed. Even his mother-in-law, who was living on a small, fixed income, reached into her ‘secret stash’ and gave him $10,000.” Or the time Friedman realized his attempts to force his singing voice to be a certain way was keeping him from discovering his voice’s natural tendencies. Only in being himself was he finally able to effectively sing. The author’s prose is conversational and unhurried, and his stories have an appealing, homilylike didacticism to them (attributable, perhaps, to his partner’s career as a nondenominational minister). Here, Friedman provides an explanation of humility: “What this means is that when you have a problem, you hand it over to someone or something that knows better than you how to resolve it. For example, when I have a broken toilet, I humbly call the plumber, because I know that the plumber knows how to fix it.” While many of the tales and quotes are pleasantly uplifting, the volume leans so hard into the eponymous song that it starts to become a distraction. The author mentions it frequently; the full lyrics appear twice in the work; and each chapter takes its title from a line in the song. Friedman also includes lyrics from some of his other songs in several of the chapter-ending quotation sections. There’s a recycled quality to all of this that suggests a lack of original thought. Encouraging anecdotes aside, it’s difficult to imagine the book finding a wide audience.
A sincere but uneven work for those weathering a crisis.Pub Date: May 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1736241820
Page Count: 237
Publisher: Library Tales Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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