A slender but substantial offering, with some gaps, for those interested in the ideas of Shakespeare.
The Bard was a naturalistic philosopher—and a psychologist, a gender-bender, an ethicist and moralist and, of course, a genius.
McGinn (Philosophy/Rutgers Univ.) has previously turned his philosopher’s eye on the arts (The Power of Movies: How Screen and Mind Interact, 2005), and here he takes on the plays of the Sweet Swan of Avon, though admitting he is no literary scholar, no authority on Shakespeare. Still, he has given a number of the plays a close and serious and convincing reading, and he brings to Shakespeare studies a philosophical perspective often either absent or amateurishly handled. McGinn takes up a number of philosophical issues and shows how they appear in key texts—knowledge and skepticism, the nature of the self, causality. He looks closely at A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear and The Tempest. He alludes elsewhere to a few other plays. Following these close readings, he examines some broader concerns—gender, psychology, ethics—and ends with a brief consideration of Shakespearean tragedy (he thinks Aristotle’s definition of tragedy was wrong) and a quick consideration of the nature of Shakespeare’s genius. McGinn assumes that readers know little about the plays under discussion (the lists of characters and plot summaries seem somehow superfluous for anyone interested in such a title as this), and there are a few surprising omissions—in the gender chapter, for example, he does not mention The Taming of the Shrew. The author, justifiably, makes much of the Bard’s reading of Montaigne and of his almost preternatural understanding of human nature.
A slender but substantial offering, with some gaps, for those interested in the ideas of Shakespeare.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-085615-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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