A minor but occasionally stimulating collection (nine of the 20 pieces originally appeared in Of Other Worlds) on fiction, fantasy, and related topics. Some of the items look suspiciously like fillers (a one-paragraph tribute to E. R. Eddison, for example, or the transcript of a chat on science fiction with Kingsley Amis and Brian Aldiss); and none of them is truly memorable. But Lewis' wide reading and sturdy common sense (in some ways he was a scaled-down version of Dr. Johnson) make him a rewarding, if not illuminating, critic. Even when his case is dubious ("bad art never enraptures"), his debating skills are formidable. And while not steadily eloquent, Lewis can hammer out a well-turned phrase: "We must not listen to Pope's maxim about the proper study of mankind. The proper study of man is everything." Lewis has no all-encompassing system to offer, thank goodness. He praises the work of his friend J. R. R. Tolkien indiscriminately, and he often fails to substantiate his prejudices (against The Arabian Nights, for instance). Still, when it comes to fundamentals, to showing why Animal Farm is a classic and 1984 is not, to defending H. Rider Haggard's creative importance despite his wretched style, to explaining the appeal of The Wind in the Willows, Lewis does a more than satisfactory job. The book won't stir up a great deal of interest except among his admirers, but their number seems to be large—and growing larger.
Pub Date: April 30, 1982
ISBN: 0156027682
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1982
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
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
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