Sometimes clumsy, sometimes incidental, but distinguished by honesty (“I think some people deserve to get their asses...
Debut nonfiction from the noted Chicano novelist and short-story writer (Woodcuts of Women, 2001, etc.), who gathers essays and occasional pieces written over more than 20 years.
Describing his approach to essay writing as “first-person stupid,” Gilb pretends to offer no definitive answers. A construction worker before turning to writing—a past on which many of these pieces turn—the author has a steady hand and a workmanlike attitude, and though his essays contain few surprising aperçus or dazzling remarks, neither are they showy or self-indulgent. A few pointed remarks note the marginalization of minority writers in the US. Gilb wonders, for instance, why Jonathan Franzen’s celebrated Harper’s canon “couldn’t find a single writer of importance who was not from the historically dominant culture,” observes that the world of New York publishing is far removed from that of a Tejano journeyman such as himself, and takes issue with Southwestern-literature curricula that do not embrace the work of such writers as Rolando Hinojosa and Américo Paredes, to say nothing of younger Chicano authors. In several essays Gilb touches on his experiences as a university instructor of creative writing. He insists, among other things, that he be allowed to teach entry-level composition, because those students haven’t acquired the gloss of smug would-be professionalism that distinguishes MFA candidates, about whom he has little good to say. Using the work of Cormac McCarthy, Larry McMurtry, and others as springboards, Gilb also explores to good purpose the curious relationship of Mexican-Americans to Mexico, a place that Gilb evokes as something of a wonderland while avoiding the clichés that mark so much writing about the land south of the border.
Sometimes clumsy, sometimes incidental, but distinguished by honesty (“I think some people deserve to get their asses kicked”), bittersweet optimism, and plain good writing, these pages offer Gilb’s fans—and they are many—much to admire.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-8021-1742-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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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