Jargon-free critical essays on the intersection of American culture and history. Aaron (The Unwritten War, 1973) has chosen to reprint articles and reviews spanning the last 50 years. These writings document the bygone era of ``The Man of Letters in American Culture''—title of one of the essays and an unwitting commentary on the entire book- -and give the collection a rather outdated feel. If the man of letters is an intellectual generalist who, Aaron says quoting Lionel Trilling, sees culture as ``the meeting of literature with social actions and attitudes and manners,'' then Aaron is himself a last vestige of that breed of critics who, he remarks, vanished with the death of Edmund Wilson. It will be difficult to find a readership for these pieces, since they want to occupy a cultural space the author himself says has disappeared: the educated readership for the so-called ``man of letters.'' All the requisite topics are here, including an essay on ``The American Left'' in the 1930s, originally published nearly 30 years ago in response to the ``reported upsurge of the New Left.'' The strongest section, ``Outsiders,'' contains essays on issues of class, race, and ethnicity—the holy triad of American Studies and cultural studies today. These were written more recently written and retain a contemporary interest. There's a review of Arnold Rampersad's biography of Langston Hughes; an intriguing theory of ``The Hyphenate Writer and American Letters,'' and ``The `Inky Curse': Miscegenation in the White American Literary Imagination.'' One wishes Aaron had expanded this section into an entire book, instead of burying it in a mass of material that seems governed by personal nostalgia. A somewhat anachronistic collection by an American Studies pioneer.
Pub Date: June 30, 1994
ISBN: 1-55553-195-4
Page Count: 324
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1994
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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