Students of Texas literature will want this as an index of both up-and-coming and canonical writers (absent Benjamin Sáenz...
A mixed bag of writings from and about the Rio Grande country of Ojinaga, Terlingua and suchlike places.
There are a few problems with this anthology, and two emerge in the title: First, this is not about the U.S.–Mexico border but only the Texas–Mexico border, which limits the possibilities; second, though Texas has a rich literary culture, a great many of the voices here are much-anthologized (Ray Gonzalez, Pat Mora, Rolando Hinojosa-Smith) rather than “new.” The editors’ introductory observations tend to the aridly academic—e.g., “What is arising from the Borderlands today is a resistance to the imagined ideal of a border itself and to the strict codification of pure English and pure Spanish”—though folklorist and literary scholar José Limón places some of the issues in context with refreshing plainspokenness: The border is different from the interiors of either Texas or the neighboring Mexican states, Larry McMurtry is a better spokesman for Dallas than Laredo, and the racial divide between Hispanos and Anglos shows no signs of narrowing anytime soon. This Pushcart-ish collection of stories, essays and poems, though with plenty of newcomers, is long on those divisions, longer still on righteous indignation (in that regard, René Saldaña’s essay on being rousted at a border crossing is a marvel), and short on universalizing—and memorable—art. When that art does come, it is often through the hands of the old-timers (Gonzalez: “When I was younger, I believed in / the collar lizards that overran the desert”; Mora: “Daiquiri became the eagle’s name, and I decided I’d best have the ingredients on hand in case I got desperate—and I don’t mean the ice version sans rum”).
Students of Texas literature will want this as an index of both up-and-coming and canonical writers (absent Benjamin Sáenz and Cormac McCarthy). For students of borderlands literature writ large, a more general collection extending westward awaits its gatherer.Pub Date: April 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-62349-125-3
Page Count: 292
Publisher: Texas A&M Univ.
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
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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