A slim memoir of a revitalizing love affair, overwhelmed by intellectual overkill. Ill, drinking too much, and unable to write, noted French author Duras was spending her time holed up in her apartment on the French coast until a chance correspondence with Yann Andrea Steiner, 36 years younger than herself, turned into a restorative affair when the young man visited her in the summer of 1980. Here- -recalling elliptically the details of their meetings, their living together, and their conversations, and creating a long fable that encompasses many of her favorite themes, including the Holocaust, the anarchy of passion, and the tragedies of childhood—Duras expresses gratitude for Steiner's restoring her health and her art, for being ``the voice of my life.'' The fable—which forms the major part of the text—was inspired by watching a group of children and their camp counselors on the beach, as well as by Steiner's inquiries about Theodora Kats, inspiration for a book that Duras had abandoned writing ``after thinking for years [that she] could write it.'' The mystery of Kats—a woman dressed all in white who was seen watching at a station as trains rolled by on their way to the concentration camps, and who may have been shot by the Germans or may have escaped to Switzerland—shadows Duras's fable. That fable itself concerns a six-year-old boy playing on the beach and in love with his counselor, who tells him stories of a mysterious fountain that must die. The fable is fraught with symbols, weighty messages, and an arch pretentiousness that ultimately renders it banal rather than significant. Thin, despite all the heavy stuffing. For die-hard Duras fans only.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-684-19590-9
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1993
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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