McPhee embarks on a cargo ship to South America, scouting the endangered life of the American Merchant Marine. The masterful essayist (most recently The Control of Nature, 1989, and Rising From the Plains, 1986) follows Andy Chase, second mate, onto the merchant ship Stella Lykes. Andy is among the oversupply of mostly aging sailors forced to spend too much time looking for a ship. From Charleston to Valparaiso, Cartagena, and Callao, these men sail, picking up and unloading cargo by the ton—here, including mattresses, methane, a fire engine, and starving horses. McPhee's sculptured prose sets us out on the water. The momentum of more than forty thousand tons, he writes, is as absolute as the darkness. Into the time-suspended pace of ship life—the meals, the watches—he intercuts geology, history, and navigation, letting 1835 Darwin evoke Chile today. At sea, tension abounds, not simply in the chance of storms (where walls of water can sever a ship), collisions, and pirates (who board the ship at Guayaquil), but in the ulcerated mst eating away the aging hull. Once No. 1 in the world in total ships, with over 2,000, the US Merchant Marine now has fewer than 400. Weighed down by taxes, insurance, and wages, American carriers can't compete with often-subsidized foreigners. (The Russians carry 50 times as much freight.) This loss we feel, watching the command of captain Paul McHenry Washburn, 65, who navigates by dead reckoning and docks a ship the length of Rockefeller Center as if he were closing a drawer. The romance of the Andes back-lighted from the water; the reality of stowaways, 150-degree engine-room heat, and a ship dead in the water—like the Merchant Marine itself: these McPhee captures. This classic sea story, previously published in The New Yorker, also asks why America responds in slow motion to global conditions.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1990
ISBN: 0374523193
Page Count: 252
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1990
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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