Barry (Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need, 1991, etc.), syndicated humorist and author of a lot of funny books (most with his name in the title—as if there's a lot of shoddy imitation), does it again. This time he does it to the Land of the Rising Sun. The current offering beats making the trip. As Barry notes, ``flying from the United States to Japan takes approximately as long as law school.'' And the book is cheaper. This volume is full of insight into ethnic differences (it would be simpler, for example, ``to get the entire population of Tokyo to wear matching outfits than to get any two randomly selected Americans to agree on pizza toppings'') and technical similarities (``Japanese telephones work pretty much like ours, except that the person on the other end doesn't understand you''). The always cosmopolitan author, with spouse and ten-year-old son, goes to a mannerly baseball game, sits through a bit of Kabuki, attends a puzzling comedy club, gapes at sumo wrestlers, nearly views Mt. Fuji, worries about the eel shortage, sings karaoke with the worst of them, experiences almost terminal tranquility at a traditional inn, and takes a traditional bath with his traditional yakuta tied wrong. Don't confuse the first-class clowning with contemporary Japan-bashing. Barry sees things quite clearly. And, inspired by a visit to Hiroshima, there's a new, thoughtful touch of maturity. Throughout, though, Barry seeks to avoid the very real dangers of mutual understanding between nations. He succeeds admirably, with his accustomed slapstick ease. A droll, light companion to all those heavy texts that offer dreary, detailed analyses of Nippon and its people; and if your yakuta is tied wrong, the hell with it. (Line drawings by Barry throughout.)
Pub Date: Oct. 23, 1992
ISBN: 0-679-40485-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
IN THE NEWS
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
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