An intensely personal chronicle of the courtship and married life of an influential figure in the development of anthropological fieldwork. Written between 1916 and 1935, these letters allow readers to follow the development of a highly improbable romance. Elsie Masson was a young Australian nurse from a good family, Bronislaw Malinowski an ``enemy alien'' (Polish) six year older. Despite the objection of family members and friends, as well as long separations due to Malinowski's fieldwork, their relationship grew into a strong commitment, then marriage. The correspondence, while not exactly passionate, is set against epic backdrops and radiates a tenderness and intense longing that seem impossible in this age of cellular phones and commuter flights. The letters relating directly to anthropological fieldwork serve to dispel romantic notions; Malinowski writes frankly of his boredom, isolation, despair, and loathing for many of his sources. In a particularly honest moment, he expresses bitter annoyance that the wife of an informant has died of tuberculosis, which means he will be unable to question the man about spells during the mourning period. These candid descriptions of his work humanize the revered founder of modern ethnographic fieldwork. The correspondence also reminds us of the striking changes in daily life that have occurred since the early 1900s: Elsie takes strychnine for medicinal purposes and arsenic tonic to gain weight; Bronislaw has all of his teeth removed to prevent a recurrent throat infection; the suffragette movement is a pressing concern. Like a marvelously overstuffed attic filled with interesting relics of an age gone by, the book is much more suited to browsing than end-to-end reading. Unexpected surprises and bits of insight abound throughout. Essential reading for romantics, anthropologists, and history buffs.
Pub Date: April 12, 1995
ISBN: 0-415-11758-5
Page Count: -
Publisher: Routledge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1995
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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