Not every exposure is perfect, but this literary album contains striking snapshots by a gifted writer with a capacious heart...
An eclectic selection from the 40-year career of the popular but controversial Israeli novelist and essayist (How to Cure a Fanatic, 2006, etc.).
Arranged loosely by theme (“In the Promised Land,” “In an Autobiographical Vein,” etc.), these pieces illustrate the range of Oz’s talents and the focus of his interests. Born in Jerusalem in 1939, he left home at 14 to live in a kibbutz; of all social systems, he declares, it is “the least bad, the least unkind.” As a citizen of a nation perpetually at war, he acknowledges that violence is sometimes necessary—Dachau, he notes, was not liberated by peace demonstrators—but believes it ought to be a last resort rather than the first option. He condemns all sides in the Middle East conflict, thereby estranging himself from conservatives. His most wrenching essay terms Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon “a war of deceit and brainwashing.” Oz writes about the many changes he’s witnessed in Jerusalem, about the existence of evil in the world—he chides Freudians and just about all other social scientists for their failure to engage with it—and about the horrors of warfare. In the grimmest entry, an excerpt from his 1971 novel Crusade, a medieval Crusader orders the torture and murder of a Jew. Like most anthologies, this one offers mixed blessings. It will surely introduce this important modern writer to a broader audience, but some of the selections are confusing, especially those from his fiction. There are some striking sentences (common for Oz), but many readers will experience bewilderment as they struggle to glean the passages’ context within the novels.
Not every exposure is perfect, but this literary album contains striking snapshots by a gifted writer with a capacious heart and humane philosophy.Pub Date: April 14, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-15-603566-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2009
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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