Familiar essays and lectures by the great Argentine fantasist, plus many hitherto uncollected pieces. Borges (1899—1986) first appeared on the American scene in 1962, when his Ficciones abruptly made it plain that a major foreign writer had escaped our attention for quite a while. Since then, our publishing houses have been briskly making up for lost time, issuing a wide variety of anthologies and collections. This one, honoring the author’s centenary, comprises no fewer than 150 separate nonfiction pieces: essays, lectures, book and movie reviews, magazine articles, journalistic commentary, prologues to Spanish translations of books from other languages. This is a lot of Borges, and the volume’s bulk runs counter to the spirit of his creativity. A modest and always fastidious writer, he cultivated short forms with great success; consequently, to have so much of his occasional writing deposited in one clump may not have been to his taste. Still, it’s good to reread familiar pieces and discover a few new ones. Curiously, the expanded Borges does not open new vistas on this writer. Instead, it serves to confirm that his imagination circled back continually and always fruitfully to topics and figures that preoccupied him: De Quincey, The Arabian Nights, Chesterton, Schopenhauer, the Kabbalah, Nietzsche, Argentine identity, Buddhism, and the idea, variously ramified, of infinity. His characteristic pose is that of slightly pedantic bookishness, as in this opening: “I read, a few days ago, that the man who ordered the building of the almost infinite Chinese Wall was that first Emperor, Shih Huang Ti, who also decreed the burning of all books that had been written before his time.” Apart from a little new information about this or that, what we always come away with is a deepened understanding of how passionate and rich the literary life can be. Fresh translations, useful and unintrusive notes (editor Weinberger has also translated the poetry of Octavio Paz), several new pieces of writing, but not a leap into an altered vision of Borges. (First serial to Grand Street)
Pub Date: Aug. 24, 1999
ISBN: 0-670-84947-2
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1999
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
BOOK REVIEW
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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