A rambling analysis of why the sexes don't get along and what to do about it, based on dialogues during a wilderness seminar. Acknowledging their debt to Robert Bly, Kipnis (Knights Without Armor—not reviewed) and Herron lead eight other men and women on a camping trip to find ``soul-utions'' to sexual conflict. The campers ``build a ground for ritual conflict'' and pass a ``talking stone'' around the fire, sharing their fears and resentments about the opposite sex. They readily agree that gender stereotypes are based on fact: Men are hunger-warriors, women are nurturers and gatherers. One man kills a rattlesnake, an event that helps divide the group for a while into separate men's and women's camps. These reunite to discuss men as heroes and abusers, women as victims and abusers. One woman apologizes to her partner, a ``weak'' man, for dominating him. Along the way, the authors insert quotations from Ashley Montague, Alfred Adler, Naomi Wolf, Betty Friedan, together with smatterings of myth from different cultures. The goal of gender justice is based on an idea attributed to Margaret Mead that ``when one gender suffers, by virtue of unfairness or inequality, the other also suffers.'' Women earn less money, while many men are trapped in dangerous blue-collar jobs. The injustice of turning class inequities into gender war is touched on. The ``soul-ution'': instead of competing for, say, health-care funds (breast versus prostate cancer), the sexes should join forces for the common good. Women should be drafted and work blue-collar jobs. As for date rape and sexual harassment, men should stop thinking women mean yes when they say no, and women should say no more clearly. Hardly earthshaking stuff. Nonetheless, the plucky, if hokey, confrontations of the campers—punctuated by cries of ``Amen, brother,'' ``Ho!'' and ``Make it So!''—raise serious issues in an amusing, provocative, and accessible way.
Pub Date: Feb. 19, 1994
ISBN: 0-688-11924-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1993
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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