Parker is articulate and provocative, seeing the poetry in the ordinary and the wonderful in the world.
A collection of short pieces encompassing the whimsical, the meditative, and the tragicomic.
Is the world a big place full of small things, or a small place stuffed with big things? Parker, a staff writer for the Atlantic and author of a biography of Henry Rollins, would probably say it is both, judging from this compilation of his essays and poems. His subjects veer from the philosophical to the very strange, from quantum physics to “the psychedelic locusts that run the universe.” The author explains why Jason Bourne ("poor human suffering the essential questions") is better than James Bond and discusses which movie star has the best running style—he settles on Tom Cruise, who runs "with the face of an angry Christ.” Parker is not shy about getting personal. He might be the only person to have written a poem about constipation, which includes a cat. He admits to a misspent youth, with too many party drugs and too much literature. However, both gave him odd insights into the way the world works. Is it possible that the hum of a refrigerator, heard in the insomniac hours, is really the hidden song of the eternal? What do hypervigilant squirrels know that we don’t? Parker’s writing is carefully polished, with the humor often hiding dark undertones, which in turn obscure deeper absurdities. (Consider a mixture of Cormac McCarthy’s shade and Steve Martin’s offbeat comedic spirit.) It all makes for enjoyable reading that can be consumed at once or piecemeal; many of Parker’s essays deserve serious contemplation. Among numerous other topics, he pens odes to the “Farting Horse,” “Crying Babies,” “Bad Reviews,” “My Dog’s Balls,” “Being Dead,” and “Wanting to Be a Great Poet.”
Parker is articulate and provocative, seeing the poetry in the ordinary and the wonderful in the world.Pub Date: June 18, 2024
ISBN: 9781324091639
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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