The border breaks down at this collection’s core. No matter how resonant the metaphor, the writers Stavans has gathered do...
A collection of “piezas de ocasion” – slim essays, reviews and prologues by South American writers looking north, and North American writers looking south.
Author and essayist Stavans, who grew up Jewish in Mexico and now teaches at Amherst, makes maximal use of geographic and cultural distances in organizing this collection. Although he defines a border as “nothing but an artificial divide,” he also maintains that for him, “la frontera” has been an obsession since 1985, when he first crossed it. Here he gathers an array of pieces that function almost like facing mirrors: From each side of the Rio Grande, consummate writers reflect on their peers from the opposite shore. Rather than revealing unsuspected truths about each other, though, they invariable expose specific truths about themselves. Carlos Fuentes, writing about William Styron’s use of language as a paradoxical force, demonstrates his own sensitivity to the interplay of language and power – and the importance he places on both. Juan Carlos Onetti, reviewing Lolita, reveals his contempt for the “secret symbols, melancholy, and handshakes” shared by the author and his audience, even as he lauds Nabokov’s talent. And Jorge Luis Borges betrays his disaffection for allegory as he explores the implications of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Calvinism. Although each essay has its own integrity, the 32 selections are not uniformly strong; nor do they cohere any more readily when ordered by the academic conceit of the frontier. Borderline opposition certainly exists, but as a structural device it seems highly artificial; these writers do not speak to division as much as connection, even when they’re taking issue with each others’ artistic obsessions.
The border breaks down at this collection’s core. No matter how resonant the metaphor, the writers Stavans has gathered do not address cultural and political divisions as directly as the omnipresent links between power, language, and art.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-8223-2400-8
Page Count: 314
Publisher: Duke Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
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
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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