But there’s no need to quibble. This is fine, fine reading.
The well-known poet and memoirist presents the 16th installment in this flawless series.
Last year’s millennial edition may have been the best ever. Edited by Alan Lightman, it took a philosophical turn, pondering 21st-century issues of technology and dehumanization; particularly striking were Andrew Sullivan’s wrenching essay on hate crimes and Wendell Berry’s passionate case for small farms. Under Norris’s guidance, the new compendium is more literary, with an evident preference for creative nonfiction. Jeffrey Heiman’s “Vin Laforge,” about a little town in the Berkshires as seen through one old man’s memories, could as easily be called a short story—a sly essay of the kind Ring Lardner might have written. The same is true of Yusef Komunyakaa’s “Blue Machinery of Summer,” a Vietnam veteran’s reminiscences of the factory jobs he held upon his return from the war. Eight out of 26 pieces are from only two publications, The American Scholar and the perennially dominating New Yorker. One of the selections from the latter may be the best of the best: Marcus Laffey’s broodingly ironic essay on police work in the Bronx after midnight, “The Midnight Tour.” The star-author entry is also from the New Yorker, Stephen King’s “On Impact,” about the his accident while jogging (he was hit by a van) and difficult recovery. There’s some literary criticism—James Campbell’s entertaining snippet on Robert Louis Stevenson as a travel-writer—and a roundup of grief literature, including “The Work of Mourning,” Francine Du Plessix Gray’s meditation on the death of her father. Though William T. Vollman plays with form a bit (“Upside Down and Backward”), these are mostly traditional essays. In the current fashion, they shy away from grandiose pronouncements and booming conclusions.
But there’s no need to quibble. This is fine, fine reading.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2001
ISBN: 0-618-15358-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2001
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
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
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