As true a litmus strip as any of a country whose future hangs in strange and precarious balance. (Photos throughout)
Hanging out with a shepherd, journalist Apple explores the complex relationship between Austria and its Jewish inhabitants, one that doesn’t fit neatly into prescribed categories.
Hans Beuer is a Yiddish folksinger as well as the guardian of 625 sheep, a wandering Jew in the Austrian Alps. But Beuer is not some idyllic, elderly folkloric artifact; he is a man of 45 with a cell phone, a background in radical Jewish politics, a wife who no longer communes with him, and a mission to spread Yiddish culture in a country that voted into power a far-far-right politician with the shadows of Nazism hovering all about him. There are idyllic moments in the gorgeous, comforting Alpine landscape filled with wildflowers, streams, and snow-capped peaks, particularly when Beuer sings to his sheep. His reasons for song, however, are thoroughly modern: he has to calm the fretful animals so he can move them through a world in which high-country sheep cause consternation in the urban populace. And he aspires to take Yiddish culture into (at least) the next decade. Himself the recipient of a fulsome Jewish upbringing, with fond memories of a grandmother who “was reestablishing the order of the shtetl in suburban Houston,” Apple is fascinated by Beuer. Their travels bring the author face to face with any measure of Austrian anti-Semitism, and Apple discovers that the country’s gentiles are deeply ambivalent about reparations to Jewish families. But he also visits ancient Jewish town like Judenburg, and he reminds us that Austria took in Jews when the US would not. His narrative is a tumultuous mix of Nazis and neighbors, art and sex, cars and sheep, a Jewish grandmother in Houston and a girlfriend in Vienna.
As true a litmus strip as any of a country whose future hangs in strange and precarious balance. (Photos throughout)Pub Date: March 29, 2005
ISBN: 0-345-46503-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2005
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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