A peculiar but mesmerizing work of biography.
Winner chronicles the extraordinary life of his great aunt, a woman who had numerous affairs with powerful men of dubious political attachments.
The author didn’t realize how little he knew his beloved great aunt, Dorle Jarmel Soria, until she died in 2002 at the age of 101; then he found evidence, in her correspondence and effects, of a woman who led a cinematically eventful life. Her grandfather, Alexander “Sender” Jarmulowsky, an Orthodox Jew who fled Lithuania for the land of opportunity in Manhattan, owned a bank that suffered such an “ignominious collapse”—many of its immigrant depositors lost their savings—that Dorle, now all but impossible to marry off, was essentially released from all the duties, expectations, and prohibitions of her religious faith. She was a fiery, independent woman: Dorle was one of the first female students at the Columbia School of Journalism, managed the New York Philharmonic, and played a major role in the art scene of the time. What was even more startling, as Winner discovered in his impressive feat of investigative journalism, was Dorle’s inclination for romantic affairs, including those conducted with married men. A romantic at heart, she had numerous relationships with men before she married Dario Soria, a Jew who fled Italy in advance of the Holocaust. She was attracted to a very specific type: men who were as powerful as they were morally suspect. One of these, American reporter John Carter, best known for his strident support of The New Deal, was almost certainty recruited by Nazi Hermann Goering to push a “Hitlerist” party in the 1932 election. Like a private detective, the author endeavors to pin down precisely who these shady and shadowy lovers of Dorle were, and why she was so inexorably drawn to such characters. Even her husband had a politically nefarious past—he served as an officer in Italy’s fascist army in Eritrea.
For all of Winner’s herculean efforts, Dorle remains a tantalizing puzzle who defies solution. The author discovered she wrote a book of fictional romantic stories as a teenager entitled Master Loversof the World, which imagines the amorous escapades of great historical figures like Paul Gauguin and Franz Liszt, a narrative that seems to prefigure her own infatuation with powerful men: “As for her master lovers, both real and fictional, they came from different locales and cultures but had one thing in common—strength and dominance. She would have it no other way.” This is a refreshingly original book, an eclectic melange of disparate elements—the author chronicles his aunt’s life, patches together the lives of her lovers and professional associates, and reflects candidly on his own experiences with Dorle and other aspects of his life as well. A reader might not expect an aside regarding Winner’s own “physical and sexual awakening” while in college, but he includes it nonetheless, and, counterintuitively, it fits seamlessly into the narrative as a whole. This work is a fascinating blend of the personal and the historical, and a provocative comment on the ways in which both resist interpretive finality.
A peculiar but mesmerizing work of biography.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2023
ISBN: 9781944853884
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Outpost19
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
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