Heavy-handed preaching by a self-appointed guardian of traditional midwestern values and environmental concerns. In these 12 essays, most previously published in The Ohio Review, The Georgia Review, and elsewhere, Sanders (English/Indiana Univ., Bloomington; Staying Put, 1993, etc.) seeks a moral and spiritual ``center'' based upon a web of familial, local, and environmental relationships. The sentiments put forth in essay after essay show a great and worthy concern for the sad state of the natural world but ignore the existence of human beings outside of the author's wife, children, and neighbors: There is no sense that Sanders feels himself at all a member of a more global community. While each essay is supposedly grounded in the details of Sanders's own life, in the majority these particulars seem like artificial constructs erected to showcase his didactic whining. There are, however, a few welcome exceptions. These are ``Imagining the Midwest,'' in which the literary and artistic weaknesses of the largest area in the United States are looked at clearly and unsentimentally, tracing the historically mixed feelings of writers, from Mark Twain to Jane Smiley, for their native soil; and ``Voyageurs'' and ``Letter to a Reader,'' in which Sanders's technique of examining the social and natural worlds in light of his personal experience and insight actually succeeds. ``Voyageurs'' recounts a canoeing trip with the author's daughter that took him through a range of emotions, from love to terror to fear for the disappearing landscape. ``Letter to a Reader'' follows Sanders's past as a writer, showing the influences in his life, from parents to pysics to Wendell Berry, as well as the origins of his love for small-town life and the environment, without ever straying into the soap-box type histrionics that plague so much of this book. Repetitive self-righteous indignation on behalf of the environment.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-253-32941-8
Page Count: 211
Publisher: Indiana Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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