A smart selection from Fitzgerald's voluminous correspondence, tactfully annotated and chronologically arranged by Bruccoli (English/Univ. of South Carolina), who has collected and edited all of Fitzgerald's writings in over 20 volumes. Bruccoli provides a brief biography, subtle footnotes, and detailed chronologies at the beginning of each section, but Fitzgerald here speaks for himself and the familiar story takes on the ironies, texture, poignancy, and passion that often elude biographers. Fitzgerald appears in all his complexity, yet without much introspection. He had little interest in heavy-handed psychologizing. The external manifestations of character, personality, manners, and talent—these he valued, and these, as the letters show, he had. Also revealed are his wit, charm, and ambition (to write the greatest American novel); his literary ideals, his self-criticism (especially after long periods of drinking), and his generosity (offering money to the chronically impoverished Hemingway even as he was appealing for advances on his own magazine stories, mostly for the Saturday Evening Post). His letters to his editor, Maxwell Perkins, are especially revealing about his craft, his good-natured response to criticism, and the selective way he accepted advice (fortunately, The Great Gatsby was not renamed Tancredi). The relationship between his life and his work is powerfully demonstrated in this brief collection: He writes This Side of Paradise to earn money to marry Zelda—then they live like literary characters, until Zelda, from drinking and the misplaced ambition to become a ballet dancer, goes insane, her confinement and treatment inspiring and financed by Tender Is the Night. Perhaps the most touching letters are to his daughter, Scotty, who he feared would be victimized by simply being his child. A wrenching portrait of the trials of writing, the business of success, the proximity of genius and tragedy.
Pub Date: June 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-684-19570-4
Page Count: 515
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1994
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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