Prominent writers of fiction dispense copious, often conflicting, and largely entertaining advice to beginners and sundry others who feel called to publish short stories and novels. Most of the famous authors collected here by Busch, himself a prolific novelist (Girls, 1997; Long Way from Home, 1993, etc.) are American, most are contemporary, and all are English-speaking (though some give weight to their counsel by refering to Chekhov, Kafka, and Tolstoy). Only 3 of these 36 pieces have never been published before. Still, the collection makes good and illuminating reading for anyone attracted to fiction, not just to prospective writers. In an exceptionally fine letter of rejection, writer/editor Pam Durban explains and demonstrates the “clarifying particularity” that marks a successful story. In the very next letter, shrewdly positioned by Busch, Shelby Foote harangues Walker Percy to the effect that he should never, ever let an editor tell him how to write. Some interesting common themes emerge. One is resentment: “People want you to think what you do is not magical,” warns Ann Beattie. Another is noble suffering for art. An underlying assumption of many of these letters seems to be that the demoralized aspirant is slaving away in penurious, undeserved anonymity. The writer longs for recognition and security. Some of the famous authors accept the topos at face value and offer comfort; tough-minded Janette Turner Hospital does not: “I wonder if there’s any such thing as a secure niche in the literary world? Perhaps there is; but if so, it would be a deadly thing to achieve in one’s lifetime. Smugness and self-satisfaction are inimical to art.” One theme that fails to emerge is what effect the university sinecures of so many contemporary American writers may have on our fiction. Like Busch (who teaches at Colgate University), most of the contributors are also academic professors. To paraphrase Samuel Beckett: Good writing is not about something; it is something itself. Busch’s collection embodies good writing.
Pub Date: June 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-393-04735-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2000
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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