Superb: a gift that keeps on giving and a fine introduction to the life and letters of a supposedly (but not really) gray...
Following on the previous anthology, The 40s (2014), the editors of the New Yorker continue to mine the magazine’s impossibly rich history.
With the possible exception of Esquire, there has been no general-interest magazine in the history of American journalism more influential, and more packed with talent, than the New Yorker. It’s arguable when the magazine’s heyday took place, but many knowledgeable readers place it in the tenure of William Shawn, “quiet, subtle, secretive, elliptical, and, to some, quite strange,” who succeeded Harold Ross in January 1952 and set to work building his own legacy. This volume contains work by writers who are still influential today—and some who have been all but forgotten. Joseph Mitchell, interest in whom has recently revived, turns up early, in a section called “American Scenes,” reporting from the front lines of the postwar civil rights movement. Dwight McDonald, little known today, turns in a fine portrait of the activist Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Workers, who—the sexist and ageist past being what it is—is described as looking “like an elderly schoolteacher or librarian.” In a similar vein, profiling the emerging movie star Marlon Brando in 1957 at a length unthinkable today, Truman Capote sets off with the odd observation, “Most Japanese girls giggle.” As he shows, Brando sometimes gave them reason to. The portrait is every bit as serious, though, as Lillian Ross’ reportage on the making of the now-classic John Huston film The Red Badge of Courage (1951). Other highlights: a forward-looking piece by Roald Dahl anticipating the wine craze of later decades and a deeply curious short story by John Updike describing in passing the antics of a party-going woman who, “insanely drunk, was throwing herself around as if wanting to break a bone.” Other contributors include A.J. Liebling, James Thurber, Wolcott Gibbs, Marianne Moore, Sylvia Plath, and Nadine Gordimer.
Superb: a gift that keeps on giving and a fine introduction to the life and letters of a supposedly (but not really) gray decade.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-679-64481-1
Page Count: 784
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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
IN THE NEWS
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
