A mixed bag. Each piece is intended to respond to “an essential question: What is a man?” but the answers remain elusive.
A collection of 80 pieces on the essence and challenges of manhood that almost reads like a literary parody of self-help books.
According to the introduction, the book commemorates the 80th anniversary of Esquire, a magazine that “has always sought to instruct.” Here, the instruction concerns “what it means to be a man and how to live up to that responsibility.” The project is a collaboration between the magazine and Narrative 4, which attempts to “connect people and communities everywhere through the sharing of stories," and the collection’s contents were curated by novelist McCann (TransAtlantic, 2013, etc.), a co-founder of Narrative 4 and Esquire contributor, along with editors from each. The pieces span much of the globe, crossing gender lines (some of the best are from women, some of whom don’t seem to treat manhood as seriously as many men do), featuring journalists, novelists and a few nonwriterly ringers (actor Gabriel Byrne, songwriter-producer Joe Henry). There is plenty of violence and copious amounts of tears, and there is sex that is usually more an expression of power, however twisted, than of romantic love. Some of the shortest are some of the best, such as this two-sentence contribution by Pakistani novelist Mohsin Hamid: “What did it even mean, walk like a man? Still, Omar was in enough pain to take off his makeup and start trying.” There’s a provocative piece of reportage on a transgendered performer by novelist Michael Cunningham, which ends with the question, “Men. I mean, what are we anyway?” There’s also an instructional piece by Vanessa Manko that initially seems to be about sex—“It is done with the body, not with the mind. She should feel when you begin to move and if she precipitates the wrong direction, you’ve done something wrong”—but is really about the tango (which is really about sex). None of the pieces are titled, and many blur the distinction between fiction and nonfiction.
A mixed bag. Each piece is intended to respond to “an essential question: What is a man?” but the answers remain elusive.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-250-04776-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Picador
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013
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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