Poetic quality aside, there is not enough that informs the mind or heart.
An eccentric, idiosyncratic collection of essays, most previously published (some online only), on topics ranging from car washes to high-school felonies to the nature of prose itself, from Monson (Other Electricities, 2005).
Some of these pieces have the structure of traditional essays; others experiment with the form. One piece is merely an index. Another, about snow, has words scattered to resemble a blizzard. Yet another, a meditation on failure, features words competing for space with rows of periods. Says the author, “I love the idea of failure in art—the failed experiment.” And some of these pieces qualify. But there are some goodies here, too. In one piece, an attempt to come to terms with his younger, more tormented self, the author—booted from Cranbrook School for assorted teen screw-ups—returns some years later to walk the grounds, to sit and ruminate. There are a few genial pieces, about car washes and disc (Frisbee) golf, though a talented undergraduate could have produced them. Monson shares a bit of trivia along the way, including why STOP is a feature of telegrams and who invented the first automatic car wash. And we learn a little of his family history in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. One grandfather operated ferries that ceased operations when the Mackinac Bridge opened in 1957. The author, who notes that he teaches at the same school (Grand Valley State Univ.) as James Frey’s father, references Melville and Twain, among others.
Poetic quality aside, there is not enough that informs the mind or heart.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2007
ISBN: 1-55597-459-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2006
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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