This essay will try to relate the experiences of one who considers himself a bit of a mystic," and in the light of Singer's introductory exegesis, one who is also a bit of a seeker, one with a nodding acquaintance with demons and the better angels. Singer returns to his childhood and youth in Poland to chronicle the religious recognitions of a boyhood in which "Jewishness. . . contained all the flavors, all the vitamins, the entire mysticism of faith." But among the labyrinthine wonders of the cabala appeared the chill winds of a new secular science, the lures of modern philosophy, and a growing awareness of human tragedy. From the past Singer summons forth scenes to monitor the soul's journey: incantations mumbled by a small boy on dark stairs; a debate about free will between a pious mother and atheist brother in a winter of near starvation; the abuse of poor Jews by hooligans ("I could have killed myself . . . . What I was seeing was the essence of human history. . ."). Finally there is Singer's own proud "formula"—the neo-philosophic product of fevered reading and speculation, not to mention hunger, illness, and a long night in a lover's bed. "Life was. . . a little dust on the surface of [the earth] . . . transformed into consciousness which in God's dictionary was a synonym for death, protest, goals, suffering, having, asking countless questions and growing entangled in countless contradictions." A plumb line to the rich primal sea of Singer's storytelling.
Pub Date: May 1, 1976
ISBN: 0385066538
Page Count: -
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1976
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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