MixedNewsdayRestraint is not this composer’s forte, but there is something joyously shameless about his embrace of over-the-topness ... Despite its length and a title that would suggest frank tidbits, the introspection never goes all that deep and the book skirts some subjects.
Sam Shepard
MixedNewsday...a testament-like fever dream of autofiction. Loosely structured, to say the least, it is not the easiest thing to label, and not the easiest thing to read, either. Those new to Shepard’s world may not want to start here, but his fans may find the elegiac tone haunting ... The narrative, such as it is, is anchored in specificity yet evades it — a tumbleweed blown this way and that ... Death is filigreed throughout the book, but Shepard does not force his hand and avoids anything that could look like a definitive last statement, or a philosophy of life or art. He had long thought about his end, though: In his biography, Sam Shepard—A Life, John J. Winters notes that even as a youth, the future playwright worried about 'how or when I’m going to die.' When the moment came, he was ready.
Elizabeth Winder
PanNewsdayThe book attempts, Winder explains, 'to show the real, flesh and blood Marilyn — a strong, savvy woman who took control of her life.' Except that ultimately she didn’t, and even the book’s subtitle is fraught: Monroe’s 'year of joy' was also marked by sustained pill-popping and a passionate but subservient relationship with then-married Arthur Miller, who constantly undermined her. Winder is at her best when detailing Monroe’s constant search for surrogate families...But those insights are often undermined by a surfeit of name-dropping and detailed emphasis on food and outfits. At its worst, this makes Marilyn in Manhattan read like the literary equivalent of a celebrity Instagram feed ... In the end, Marilyn in Manhattan never makes clear why Monroe had no choice but to be her doomed self. Powerlessness is uncool today, but in her quest to retroactively impart agency to her subject, Winder leaves no room for the tragedy at the center of Monroe’s life.
