For this installment of our weekly book reviews from Booklist, the American Library Association’s nationally distributed book and media review publication, we have Michael Autrey’s review of “Jazz June: A Self-Portrait in Essays” by Clifford Thompson, first published June 3, 2026, in Booklist Online.
Enjoy.
“Jazz June: A Self-Portrait in Essays”
By Clifford Thompson, Oct. 2025. 168p. Univ. of Georgia, paperback (9780820374642)
“Have I lived as an alive person?” The wording of Thompson’s question is so odd, one might think it is an error. But this is, crucially, not the same as asking, “Have I lived?” In Thompson’s latest collection of essays, he is nothing if not meticulous, taking care to get close to the truth of what changes depending upon what age one is and what time one finds oneself living through. This collection lives up to its subtitle, beginning with essays about his childhood and ending with an essay about suffering a kidney stone in his 58th year. He admits to the lack of knowledge about the world all of us have as children but few are willing to set down in prose. He writes of his middle years—of employment that becomes satisfying work, of dating that becomes family life—with the same unforced, warm, gently skeptical attention. Praising the singer Otis Redding, he might be describing his own expressiveness by virtue of its opposite, “the feeling conveyed so strongly through the suggestion that he could not convey it strongly enough.” Thompson writes in a speaking voice; one leans closer to the book to listen.— Michael Autrey
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