An engaging, perceptive companion for all writers.
A guide for academic writers that is also relevant to anyone who cares about fine prose.
Novelist, essayist, and literary scholar Kumar (English/Vassar Univ.; Immigrant, Montana, 2018, etc.) offers a handbook on style and form that is simultaneously elegant and practical. Admiring “fresh, provocative, unpredictable texts,” the author is dismayed by what Toni Morrison called “the proud but calcified language of the academy.” As fiction writer David Means observed, “so much academic writing seems sealed up and hermetic and uninspired, shorn away from a love of subject.” Academic writers, Kumar asserts, work in a “culture of oppression,” in which they strive to fit into “the existing codes”—scholarly jargon—of their field in order to publish the articles and books that will earn them tenure. As a graduate student, he admits that he, too, tried mightily to emulate his teachers “and wrote sentences whose texture was inevitably thicker than cement.” Dissatisfied with the quality of his work, he despaired of ever attracting readers: “Couldn’t our analyses become more exuberant, imaginative, and even playful?” Kumar agrees with other writing guides—Strunk and White’s for one—that advocate clarity and conciseness, but he knows that the admonition to “find your voice” can be confusing. “Perhaps specificity is what brings us closer to the idea of voice, which I think is another word for distinctiveness.” Voice, in any case, “depends on the question you are asking” and the “zones of experience” from which a writer is drawing. Kumar appends his slim manual with 10 habits he recommends to his students, including setting a daily goal of at least 150 words, turning off the internet, making sure to exercise, keeping a bookshelf of several volumes to turn to as guides in “the critical matter of method or style,” and finishing one project before taking up another. He shares advice about craft from many writers of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, all of whom strive to “bring delight.” In that aim, Kumar amply succeeds.
An engaging, perceptive companion for all writers.Pub Date: March 27, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4780-0627-5
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Duke Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
