Despite the best intentions, this literary portrait does a disservice to the intellects it seeks to honor.
An oddly hyperventilating chronicle of “America’s first literary community” in mid-19th-century Concord, which novelist/biographer Cheever (My Name Is Bill, 2004, etc.) sees as a forerunner of 1960s radicalism.
The de facto adult and banker of the Massachusetts literary colony was Emerson, who not only edited (with Fuller) the Transcendental movement’s flagship publication, The Dial, but also lured the others to Concord by offering them money or the use of a home. The achievements of the group that gathered around him, as outlined by Cheever, represent the foundations of American literature: a classic memoir (Thoreau’s Walden), a novel of domesticity (Alcott’s Little Women) and fiction detailing the dark side of Puritanism (anything by Hawthorne). Cheever’s lush descriptions of the New England locale will make readers want to drive up there immediately. Shrewd about the group’s penchant for self-reinvention (Alcott’s father was originally surnamed Alcox, for example), the author is also quick to note the hilarity of their contradictions (Thoreau once accidentally set fire to 300 acres of woodland and pastures). She likens the Transcendentalists to hippies: interested in nature, questioning about religion, unorthodox in child-raising habits and vegetarian. Above all, in her view, the group flouted marital mores. That’s where the narrative goes awry. To be sure, Hawthorne dumped fiancée Elizabeth Peabody for her younger sister, Sophia. But despite Cheever’s assertions, surviving documentation shows that Hawthorne’s relationship with Fuller was less ardent than ambivalent, and there’s no indication that Emerson consummated his relationship with Fuller either. It’s also hard to take seriously the arguments of someone who writes so sloppily: Cheever labels John Brown a “violent murderer,” and favors us with such overripe passages as a bodice-ripping evocation of “the madness that envelops lovers on hot summer nights.”
Despite the best intentions, this literary portrait does a disservice to the intellects it seeks to honor.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-7432-6461-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2006
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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