A valuable and extensive collection, intelligently edited.
Ginsberg, voluble when not downright loquacious, gave hundreds of interviews over his 40-year career; Carter has chosen generously for this new gathering, including many previously uncollected.
The late poet (1926–1997) saw the interview as “a way of teaching,” and he discoursed on a kaleidoscopic catalogue of topics, from poetics to gay sex, Buddhism to politics. A firm believer in the dictum “first thought, best thought,” he was famous (or notorious) for not editing his verse, and the spontaneity of the interview format was well-suited to his desire for undiluted self-expression, not to mention his free-wheeling, free-associating range of interests. The early interviews in this collection, which is graced with detailed and helpful introductions to each piece by the editor, have that loose-fitting, freefalling energy that makes the great poems of the 1950s such a revelation. But in an interview—often aided and abetted by the giddily foolish counter-cultural amateurism of his alternative-press interlocutor—Ginsberg’s occasional wackiness dates badly, looking like mere eccentricity and all but obliterating the intelligence underneath. As his fame grows, he doesn’t fare much better when interviewed by uncomprehending mainstream journalists (although a sparring match with William F. Buckley is amusing). The best material in the collection comes from interviews done for the Paris Review, the New York Quarterly (where he can expatiate on his aesthetics for sympathetic and thoughtful questioners) and, ironically, Playboy (where the sheer length and breadth of the dialogue gives him enough room to stretch out his riffing into full-length song). The interview format does bring out his tendency to absurdly categorical statements and pronouncements with little relationship to reality (as in a spirited but idiotic defense of Ezra Pound’s economic theories on the occasion of the older poet’s death). But Ginsberg was someone who, although more than capable of being foolish, was incapable of being boring. As a result, this is a book that can be profitably mined for many gems, especially when the subject is poetry.
A valuable and extensive collection, intelligently edited.Pub Date: April 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-06-019293-3
Page Count: 624
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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