A fascinating intermingling of philosophy and dramaturgy, both in the name of existential commitment. Though Sartre's fundamental concepts—liberty, situation, negation—are famous, their particular relevance to the plays he's been presenting since the Forties has always been cloudy. So it is good that a compilation of his theatrical reflections—mostly short essays, lectures, interviews—is now available. The knotty brilliance so formidable in Being and Nothingness or Saint Genet is absent, but the basic conflict is still the same: individual rights vs. "bourgeois morality." The bourgeois, of course, is the bugbear throughout, whether identified as fascism, materialism, capitalism, God, or Hugo, the "hero" of Dirty Hands, "a young bourgeois idealist who does not understand the imperatives of concrete action." With the staging of The Flies during the German occupation, Sartre sounded his general formula: immerse men in universal and extreme situations "which leave them only a couple of ways out, arrange things so that in choosing the way out they choose themselves, and you've won—the play is good." By the time of the Cold War, however, Sartre deserted metaphysical biases for political shibboleths, favoring a "people's theater" demystifying the hypocritical values of a class society and condemning "bourgeois theater"—including the dramas of Beckett and Ionesco which take for granted an unalterable "incommunicability" between men—as "reactionary." As can be seen, Sartre's arguments are not always coherent, but the book is important nevertheless.
Pub Date: May 1, 1976
ISBN: 0394492471
Page Count: 372
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1976
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
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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