Samples of his adaptations scattered throughout the book demonstrate that Doerries has a knack for putting ancient speeches...
A memoir of a man with a mission, bringing the message of ancient tragedies to modern audiences in need of the comfort of their compelling truths.
The founder of Theater of War, “a project that presents readings of ancient Greek plays to service members, veterans, and their families to initiate conversations about the visible and invisible wounds of war,” Doerries, a “self-proclaimed evangelist for classical literature and its relevance to our lives today,” has adapted the texts of Greek tragedies into everyday speech, believing that the messages they contain can foster compassion and healing. His troupe stages readings of modern translations of ancient tragedies, followed by panel discussions eliciting audience participation. The experience of directing a performance of a Euripedes play while a student of classical languages led him to a career translating and directing Greek dramas. Doerries was able to persuade the military to allow him to present on bases around the world his adaptation of Sophocles’ Ajax, in which a Greek warrior stricken with grief, exhaustion, anger, and a sense of betrayal by his superiors commits suicide. The author writes that recognizing themselves in the character of Ajax, servicemen were able to share their stories as never before. Similarly, he has presented his adaption of Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound, a play about discipline, power, hierarchy, and control, to corrections officers. His work has since expanded into readings of other Greek plays to other groups—for example, students and teachers at medical schools and hospitals, with the aim of starting open discussions about palliative care and death and dying. He has also presented the biblical Book of Job before communities suffering in the aftermaths of natural disasters.
Samples of his adaptations scattered throughout the book demonstrate that Doerries has a knack for putting ancient speeches into powerful modern words; hopefully, a companion volume containing the full texts will follow.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-307-95945-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 25, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
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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