Anyone who quotes Bialystock instead of Derrida is our kind of guy. Who says fun has to be brainless?
Having recently become a deliberative septuagenarian, prolific commentator Epstein (Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy’s Guide, 2006, etc.) gathers another profusion of personal essays.
Most of this varied fare first appeared under the byline Aristides in the American Scholar, the literary quarterly he edited from 1975 to 1997. Epstein practices the craft of the essay quite proficiently in multi-layered pieces that often prompt reflections beyond the subject matter directly at hand. True, his literary musings on favorite authors sometimes draw so heavily on said authors’ biographies that they sound a bit like prefaces to the Collected Works. But that’s fine by us, as they say in his hometown (Chicago), when he shares his thoughts about favorites like Auden, Valéry, Beerbohm, Karl Shapiro and, of course, philosopher Max Bialystock, the famous producer who supplies the book’s title. Proust, Epstein avers, produced a masterwork so good “it shouldn’t even be read for the first time.” Capote, as a “savvy man” and Keats, as a medical man, are considered anew. Nice as the appreciations may be, the best fun here is in the ad hominem pastings administered to panjandrum know-it-alls like Edmund Wilson, Mortimer Adler and (more contemporaneously) big old Harold Bloom. Epstein also considers such issues as book disposal, poets laureate, pedagogy, the wisdom of his father, movies and what’s wrong with the world—“too many people in it just like me,” he concludes. As is proper for a talented teacher and essayist, he is wonderfully opinionated. He hates “public intellectuals” and turgid writing. He’s a guileless snob, an Anglophile and a bit of a Francophile too, with a trace of Yiddishkeit.
Anyone who quotes Bialystock instead of Derrida is our kind of guy. Who says fun has to be brainless?Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-618-72193-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2007
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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