A well-chosen introduction to a lauded intellectual.
The world according to the winner of the 1981 Nobel Prize in literature.
Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Cohen offers a collection of excerpts from the work of Nobel laureate Elias Canetti (1905-1994) representing the writer’s life, perceptions, and interests. Born to a well-to-do Sephardic Jewish family in Bulgaria, Canetti moved to England as a child. After his father’s sudden death, at age 31, when the author was 7, his mother returned with her children to continental Europe, where Canetti remained until 1938, when the Nazis were on the rise. Vibrant childhood memories include family celebrations of Purim and Passover, the birth of a brother when he was 4, a devastating accident, and his triumph at learning to read. Although he had studied for a degree in chemistry, Canetti found his true vocation as a writer: “Without writing I am nothing,” he noted in 1994. “I sense how my life dissolves into dead, dull speculation when I no longer write about what is on my mind.” Identity, freedom, and power became recurring themes in writings that, according to Cohen, aimed to “shatter our superficial vocabularies and politicized identities of false belonging.” In 1927, Canetti witnessed a violent uprising in Vienna that proved to be the seminal event inspiring his 1960 study, Crowds and Power. “I realized,” he wrote, “that there is such a thing as a crowd instinct, which is always in conflict with the personality instinct, and that the struggle between the two of them can explain the course of human history.” Cohen intersperses chronological samplings of Canetti’s published works—two, “The Profession of the Poet” and portions of The Book Against Death, appear in English for the first time—with aphorisms and diary entries from his journals. Canetti espoused specific literary affinities—for Cervantes and Stendhal, for example—and he extolled the sensibility of the poet, who carried within him “the literary legacy of mankind” and was capable of sublime empathy with “the smallest, the most naive, the most powerless.”
A well-chosen introduction to a lauded intellectual.Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-374-29842-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Picador
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
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 frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
© 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.
