Do we really need a whole book that documents Tchaikovsky's final illness and rails against the theory that he committed suicide? Poznansky, author of an unsatisfying 1991 Tchaikovsky biography, assembles much of the relevant evidence here but fails to shape it into either a commanding argument or an involving narrative. Scornful of speculation that the composer took his own life to avoid a homosexual scandal, Poznansky contends that Tchaikovsky was comfortable with his homosexuality in later years; that a gay lifestyle was no great problem in upper-class, artistic Russian circles; and that the powers-that-be would have protected the great composer from any serious repercussions. The bulk of the book is a week-by-week chronicle of Tchaikovsky's last month (October 1893), chiefly presented through underedited excerpts from letters, diaries, memoirs, and newspaper reports. Poznansky points out that the composer was busy and cheerful, making future plans, prior to falling ill with cholera. He scoffs at ``idle and naive'' debate about the `` `secret' programme'' behind the Sixth Symphony (the ``PathÇtique''), which premiered two weeks before the composer's death. And he finds nothing improbable in the sketchy, inconsistent record of Tchaikovsky's illness, noting that he was hardly the only aristocrat to succumb during that period. Finally, the rumors of self-annihilation and coverup—including the familiar ``Russian roulette'' tale of Tchaikovsky insisting on drinking a glass of unboiled water—are elaborately, if not conclusively discounted. (He attributes such rumors to a bohemian milieu ``fraught with a peculiar mixture of philistinism and libertinage and singularly prone to the perpetuation of all manner of gossip and real or imagined psychodramas.'') Future biographers will appreciate the gathering of materials here, some of which Poznansky discovered in Russian archives. Non- scholars—aside from those with special interest in cholera—will find this an unengaging patchwork, without enough texture, drama, or ingenuity to hold the documentary pieces together. (20 illustrations, not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-19-816596-X
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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