A sometimes funny, sometimes bitter memoir of a scholar's fruitless efforts to master spoken French. Watson (Philosophy/Washington Univ.; Niagara, 1993) had been specializing in the work of Descartes for 25 years when he was asked to deliver a paper in French at an international conference and decided to finally learn to speak the language. Although he compares himself here to the professor in Don DeLillo's White Noise—the world's foremost authority on ``Hitler Studies,'' who can neither speak, read, nor write German—Watson could, in fact, read French fluently (although he couldn't pronounce the words he read). When he begins to study spoken French, however, he finds his reading ability a hindrance rather than an aid: He is bored with necessary beginning exercises; he thinks too much about what he is saying; he cannot apply what he knows from reading French to speaking it. After months of lessons— three times a week at first, then every day as the conference date nears—Watson is able to read his speech in French but is unable to respond to questions following it. Rather than give up, he becomes even more determined. He enrolls in a four-month intensive beginner's course at the Alliance Franáaise in Paris, for which he just barely qualifies, but ultimately fails to win a certificate of proficiency. Watson admits that he is a less able student in his middle age than he used to be, but he assigns blame for his inability to pass elsewhere—to French pedagogy, the Alliance, and the fact that American men are uncomfortable with the unmacho sounds and facial expressions required to speak French. He also takes the opportunity to examine everything French, from toilets to Cartesian scholars, and finds much to criticize and much at which to be amused. Just this side of charming.
Pub Date: March 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-8262-1003-1
Page Count: 152
Publisher: Univ. of Missouri
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1995
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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