Second life of Henry Miller reviewed this issue (see Mary V. Dearborn's ``The Happiest Man Alive'', above), this one longer, more richly detailed, with bigger critiques of Miller's works. As portrayed by Ferguson (Enigma: The Life of Knut Hamsun, 1987), Miller turns out to be a two-sided writer, showing himself in his autobiographical fiction to be ``the happiest man alive'' despite the depths of his lifelong suffering. A charismatic of superhuman generosity, with a great gathering of ``friends.'' Miller nonetheless drew these friends harshly in his novels, so much so that one old school friend from Brooklyn wrote his own ``honest and warm'' memoir of Miller and called him hard, unfeeling, vicious, and monstrously cruel. Dearborn and Ferguson split on whether or not Miller fathered Anais Nin's stillborn daughter (Dearborn says you can't tell, but Ferguson makes very dark assumptions). Once Tropic of Cancer was published (1934) and Miller as 45 began to become ``Henry Miller,'' he also drank more, became boisterous and boorish in mixed company in order to live up to his satyr image, and enjoyed ragging friends and stealing from them. This image also fostered his famous begging letters; he saw himself as a beggar 25 years later even after the riches flowed in f rom the Grove Press editions of his banned novels: begging showed who his friends were. Once Miller became ``Henry Miller,'' Ferguson says, ``the ability or the desire to ridicule his own pretensions was largely gone,'' and he became a guru to the Beats with a foggy grasp of cosmology and philosophy. His ``autobiographical fictions...do not profit from repeated reading. They are not like symphonies or great novels that offer more with each successive experience of them. Rather they offer less...'' Ferguson shows Miller full-tilt in violent rebellion against the puritanism and materialism of his era, deep in suffering one moment, a great prancing goat the next. The last years are quite sad.
Pub Date: May 27, 1991
ISBN: 0-393-02978-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1991
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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