A miscellaneous collection of nonfiction that will do little to enhance Doctorow's reputation as a writer. Almost all of the book reviews, speeches, introductions, and political commentaries included here were solicited by editors, and seem relatively uninspired. Doctorow's literary criticism is casual to a fault, revealing a not-surprising affinity for the social realism of "hack genius" Jack London, the materialist vision of Dreiser, and the antistatist satire of Orwell. Doctorow celebrates the signs of incipient feminism in Hemingway's unfinished Garden of Eden and shares Papa's monosyllabic style ("His stuff was new. It moved). A fierce if unoriginal critic of the Reagan years, he relies on boilerplate polemics: His Reagan-bashing profile is stale, and his Brandeis commencement speech makes a facile link between social decline and Reaganomics. His introduction to the Constitution as "the sacred text of secular humanism" is reader-friendly, but his bloated declaration of "The Beliefs of Writers" too readily accepts and expands Shelley's conceit that "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." Doctorow is much better—more in tune with his fictive voice—when he writes around a topic: His meditative re-creation of 19th-century Manhattan's sights and sounds is hypnotizing; an essay on "standard" songs demonstrates a true feeling for the culturally ephemeral; a memoir of poet James Wright and the Fifties at Kenyon is both moving and clearheaded. And "False Documents" should be read by anyone interested in Doctorow's use of history in fiction—it's the closest thing to a defense of his method as we're likely to get. Fourteen fugitive pieces by a major novelist deserve some attention, if only to illuminate his far superior fiction.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0060976365
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1993
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
