A fascinating life recounted in an uneven memoir.
The founder of the Utne Reader tells his story.
Hippie, vision quester, early New Age acolyte, and member of the “mythopoetic men’s movement,” Utne is best known as the publisher of his eponymous magazine of politics and culture, which he founded in 1984 and sold in 2006. But as he observes in his memoir, all of these terms are just labels and signifiers, facets of an existence that has been eclectic in the most encompassing of ways. Born on Aug. 6, 1946, the first anniversary of Hiroshima, the author prefers to frame his narrative in terms of history—not as a set of incidents arrayed against its backdrop but in the more immediate sense of having been a participant. That such a reading is equally accurate and overstated is the conundrum at the heart of this alternately enlightening and myopic book. On one hand, Utne was everywhere, and he has never been afraid to offer dissenting views and intriguing, provocative observations. Although he visited Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love, he was far from a true believer. “If San Francisco is the mecca of love,” he told a friend, “then I’m an infidel.” So, too, his relationships with Michio Kushi, who spearheaded the macrobiotic movement, and Robert Bly began as productive before becoming increasingly fraught. Unfortunately, that independence—that posture of being inside and outside at the same time—grows increasingly self-serving as the narrative progresses. For Utne, the central subject is his spiritual journey. “This is my prayer,” he writes. “May our actions come out of hopelessness. May our actions be expressions of love.” While it’s difficult to argue with the sentiment, the framing of the language is telling. The author too rarely shifts the gaze from his own centrality. “While you are alive, be alive,” his stepgrandmother, Brenda Ueland—who operates as something of a muse in these pages—told him. In heeding her call, Utne fails to account for the bigger picture, making his book just another song of the self.
A fascinating life recounted in an uneven memoir.Pub Date: July 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9528-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
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
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
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