The essays on art and artists are distinctive and interesting; everything else is pretty generic.
Essays and reviews by Whitbread Award–winning Boyd (Restless, 2006, etc.) showcase an itinerant sensibility and imagination.
The British author certainly covers a lot of territory in this bulky collection covering 25 years and “seven broad subjects: Life, Literature, Art, Africa, Film, Television and People and Places.” Regrettably, he frequently skims the surface of these subjects and appears uninterested in avoiding either clichés or redundancy. But some gems shine from the sludge. Under the heading “Life,” we find drearily predictable details about childhood years in Africa and boarding-school ordeals, as well as the first use of an annoying A-to-Z format Boyd unaccountably favors. But we also find a lively account of “The Eleven-Year War” between the author and a borderline-unscrupulous publisher. Moving on to “Literature,” Boyd deflates reputations he considers undeserved (Muriel Spark, Richard Yates) and applauds such favorites as William Golding, W.H. Auden and Evelyn Waugh (he’s written about Waugh incessantly and, often enough, incisively). The quality ranges from a banal essay on “The Short Story” to a trenchant appreciation of Dickens’s underrated comic masterpiece Martin Chuzzlewit. “Art,” the most interesting section, offers informative examinations of once-famous British painter Graham Sutherland and French masters Braque and Monet, as well as a nifty report on the farcical “Nat Tate” hoax perpetrated by Boyd himself. “Film and Television” gathers ho-hum celebrity profiles and reviews, yet Boyd sparkles in a knowledgeable assessment of the biopic Basquiat, whose eponymous subject seems to him “a sort of latter-day, low grade, Manhattan Faust.”
The essays on art and artists are distinctive and interesting; everything else is pretty generic.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-59691-441-4
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2007
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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