Chiefly Reeves' syndicated (and Esquire) columns, 1979-81—with some initial I-discover-California material and interpolated comments. At first, this might be mistaken for a bona fide book: in 1979, political reporter Reeves married a well-employed Californian, took up bicoastal living, and became a roving columnist. He'd recently written a piece for Esquire ("California vs. the U.S.A.") positing a "tug-of-war, cultural war, between Los Angeles and New York City. . . The new values against the old." Now semi-relocated, he also picked up an assignment from The New Yorker: "California as you see it." That turns out to mean L.A.'s hazardous built-up hillsides (the brushfires, floods, landslides) and the local earthquake peril, plus the last days of the real-estate boom. For Esquire, in turn, he wrote sympathetically about the Chicanos and the '79 California gas crunch. But except for an occasional reference to the California point of view (e.g., their man in the White House), the rest is just a stream of columns—loosely grouped and lightly connected—on such assorted matters as security devices, the Moral Majority, the US auto business, the airline coupon mania (under "Different Places"); prime-time television, the L.A. Times' non-coverage of a nobody's killing, "push-button democracy," the "overrated" powers of the press ("What Do We Know and When Do We Know It"); presidential politics (an entire section); and diverse, mostly-estimable individuals—from Brooklyn highschool principal Abraham Lass to Betty Friedan to William O. Douglas. If Reeves has a hobby-horse, it's summed up by the section-heading "Cruel and Unusual Government"—but examples crop up elsewhere too. He isn't doctrinaire (he'd have gun control, for instance, and stiffer sentencing); but these are still quick, snappy takes on currently hot topics, and no more. Apprentice journalists can pick up some tips on the strategies of column-writing (and keeping gainfully employed); Reeves' fans will find him very much on camera. On the whole, though, this is writing that did its job—to entertain and provoke—at the time it was done.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1981
ISBN: 0836262077
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1981
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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