Heavy memoir by British novelist/journalist Hudson (Where the Rainbow Ends, 1987, etc.), who goes looking for his younger self that once fleetingly found Paradise in California. Hudson was an established literary journalist in London when in 1976, at age 30, he visited the US on a Harkness Fellowship, ``researching concepts of Paradise in Western thought.'' He asked his mentors at the University of Chicago for an Edenic campus and was directed to the University of California at Santa Cruz (one wonders where they sent students of Hell). Hudson found UCSC congenial, but Paradise itself lay off campus at Topside, an enchanted house in the hills where the author cast aside his English reserve to experience the joys of communal living, nature, and true love. Fifteen years later, he returned to California on a quest for ``C.'' (the initial is his distancing technique) and his former housemates. The result is this memoir, which moves back and forth in time and incorporates chunks of the author's Paradise research. It's an awkward mix: Reflections on Dante and Milton are followed by banal tape-recorded comments of Hudson's former housemates (``I did that relationship stuff early''), most of whom have gravitated into marriages and mainstream America. Hudson discovers a darker side to his recollected Paradise (while he and his lover Laura trysted in the woods, murder victims lay nearby), as well as a C. ``motivated by a desperate unwillingness to let go of his youth.'' What the reader discovers is that, when push came to shove and the author's English girlfriend arrived on the scene, C. was willing enough to let go of Laura and complete his studies in Virginia. Long on pretentiousness (``Apollo had vanquished Dionysus'') and short on rigorous self-examination.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1993
ISBN: 0-394-58487-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1993
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
