Dolorous yet exhilarating dispatches from the edge.
Palahniuk takes a break from his pitch-black, apocalyptic fiction (Diary, 2003, etc.) and spins a few yarns about real people—some not insane or suffering from a debilitating illness.
Unlike his novels, in which the human race is repeatedly pulverized for its conformity, groupthink, and general blankness, this collection of short nonfictions done for various magazines suggests that Palahniuk actually likes humanity—or at least some parts of it. This doesn’t mean he’s content with gentle sketches of quiet people who may be extraordinary in some understated, concerned, NPR kind of way. You’re more likely to find the author watching the sad spectacle of wannabe screenwriters paying for the privilege of pitching their little hearts out in a hotel ballroom to low-level movie producers (“This is something they’ve lugged around their whole life, and now they’re here to see what it will fetch on the open market”), or hanging out reading Tarot cards with Marilyn Manson. There isn’t much in the way of transcendent prose here; much of the time Palahniuk produces perfectly serviceable, high-grade magazine pieces, funny recollections of his Fight Club–era stint in Hollywood and so on, which keep readers flipping pages but won’t make it into any best-of-year anthologies. There are some powerful exceptions, though, like the short, bracing “Escort”: here, the author describes his stint as a hospice volunteer and says more in five pages about death than most novelists do in their entire careers. While every author hopes to connect with people through writing, most want the work itself to touch someone. Palahniuk aims his desire to connect in a different direction: he wants his writing to bring him into contact with humanity through the research that he does and the stories he uncovers along the way. Thus, “even the lonely act of writing becomes an excuse to be around people.”
Dolorous yet exhilarating dispatches from the edge.Pub Date: June 15, 2004
ISBN: 0-385-50448-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2004
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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