Sebald’s body of work proves that claim true, and it’s good to have these further products of his life-affirming imagination...
A miscellany of 16 literary and personal essays comprise the last testament of the late German-born author (1944–2001).
Sebald (Austerlitz, 2001, etc.) was a polymath whose hybrid narratives link him with such resisters of fixed classification as Borges, Calvino, the antiquarian Robert Burton, and Guy Davenport. His methods are perhaps best displayed in his travel writings—for example, those on the island of Corsica (about which he’d planned to write a book) in the opening four pieces here: on Napoleon Bonaparte’s art-collecting stepuncle, a walking tour of an ancient cemetery, and the influence of Corsica’s forested terrain on its history and folklore. Further essays focus to one degree or another on the experience of growing up in postwar Germany and the ways in which that period’s literature was shaped by the phenomenon of collective guilt. Sebald finds a precedent for the relevant intertwining of “Strangeness, Integration, and Crisis” in the legend of “wild boy” Kaspar Hauser, as depicted in Jacob Wassermann’s now-forgotten eponymous novel and Peter Handke’s challenging play Kaspar. He analyzes literary efforts to justify, explain away, or condemn Germany’s militarism in two superb analytical pieces: a consideration of the experience of “total destruction” as described by little-known writers Hermann Kasack, Alexander Kluge, and Hans Erich Nossack (“Between History and Natural History”); and a celebration of those who focused a salutary skepticism on “the myth of the good German”: notably, Wolfgang Hildesheimer, Heinrich Böll, and Günter Grass (“Constructs of Mourning”). Brief tributary essays on Kafka, Nabokov, and Bruce Chatwin follow, as do more autobiographical pieces, including one arguing that “only in literature . . . can there be an attempt at restitution over and above the mere recital of facts.”
Sebald’s body of work proves that claim true, and it’s good to have these further products of his life-affirming imagination and spirit.Pub Date: March 8, 2005
ISBN: 1-4000-6229-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2005
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
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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