Here’s the ever-welcome annual sampling of noncommercial publishing, full enough of poems, stories, and essays to redeem Henderson’s somewhat self-congratulatory introductory declaration of literary independence (and survival). This year the essays rank a bit higher than the stories, despite biggish-name contributions by Colum McCann, Jeffery Eugenides, Frederick Busch, and Stephen Dixon. Founding editor Joyce Carol Oates delivers a hallmark portrayal of family secrets and hidden violence in “Faithless,” and Thomas Disch offers a jet-black satire of NEA-sponsored theater in “The First Annual Performance Festival at Slaughter Rock.” Otherwise, the stories often show the watermark of writing workshops in their pages (although none of this basically competent selection could be confused with the assembly-line fiction of the ’80s). The idiosyncratic personal essay is clearly well suited to the Pushcart arena, although essays here are outnumbered by other genres. The best include Andre Dubus’s moving reflection on teaching Hemingway’s story “In Another Country”; Francine Prose’s quirky profile of her father’s career as a pathologist at New York City’s Bellevue Hospital; Julie Showalter’s vivid memoir of hardscrabble farming in “The Turkey Stories”; and Emily Fox Gordon’s tartly amusing rumination on girls’-school hierarchies and modern feminism in “The Most Responsible Girl.” The few essays about poetry, such as Carol Muske’s on Auden’s honorable self-sabotage of his laureateship in “There Goes the Nobel Prize,” outstrip in quality many of the poems. Among the poetry contributors are Toi Derricotte, Marilyn Hacker, and Grace Schulman. “Nobody wants to buy us!” exclaims Henderson, to account for Pushcart’s successful existence outside corporate publishing—no one, that is, except readers interested in good writing.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1998
ISBN: 1-888889-09-8
Page Count: 600
Publisher: Pushcart
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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