A profound engagement with travel on the astral plane.
These journeys of prizewinning Dutch novelist Nooteboom (Lost Paradise, 2007, etc.) are as much head trips as passages through space.
A footloose soul, the author finds within the cacophony of ever-changing milieus the composure in which to write. The feeling Nooteboom conveys of always floating several inches above the ground lends an appealing mystery to the places he visits. This MO works equally well for Zurich, where he admires the choreography of the swans in the lake, or the great square in Isfahan, where he conjures the heyday of mighty Persian Shah Abbas, who “once stood, lay, or sat, while watching the polo matches and races far below him. On such occasions the sides of the big terrace would be closed off, the silk curtains billowing in the wind.” These travels in the mind’s eye are supplemented by the author’s intensely observed experiences. Of a ratty, gray hotel in Mali he writes, “it does not get much uglier than this.” In Taourirt, Morocco, “I did see Death. Over in a dark corner where it is damp and cold, a pile of dirty rags lies moaning.” Nooteboom conveys the excitement of things he doesn’t understand, signs and languages he can’t decipher, a culture that rebuffs him and the refreshing shock of the wholly unknown. Yet he also finds a bemused thrill in the quotidian. At the Ritz in Barcelona, the mirror on the cupboard opens toward the bed: “this mirror must have reflected a thing or two, but it remains silent as the earth into which so many of those guests have already disappeared.” In his travels, Nooteboom discovers a balance of movement and peace, welcoming the indelible chance encounters that inevitably occur along the way.
A profound engagement with travel on the astral plane.Pub Date: April 2, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-15-603535-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Mariner/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2009
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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