A thin broth containing a few chunky morsels.
A former book editor and New Yorker staffer weighs in on the history, strategies and significance of conversation, “a human art of great importance produced by all people everywhere.”
Menaker (The Treatment, 1998, etc.), has a busy agenda: to sketch the history of human spoken intercourse, which “had to begin with grunts”; summarize some key theories about the nature of talk; analyze an edited, though lengthy, version of a recording of an actual conversation he shared with a colleague (she knew the recorder was running); examine conversation-starters and -stoppers; and offer some Dr. Philian how-to-do-it banalities. Menaker’s wit is evident throughout, and the tone is generally amiable, even avuncular—and yes, conversational. He employs self-deprecation appealingly, and his allusions leap around unpredictably, visiting both high and low culture along the way. Accordingly, the author glances at Beethoven, Randy Travis, Aristotle, William Shawn, Buddy Holly, Grendel, Linda Blair, Gary Cooper and Max von Sydow, among dozens of others. Menaker has little ill to say of anyone, though he takes a poke at Alan Cheuse and at some unnamed people who once said something inappropriate in conversation with him. Of greatest interest are some early comments about the evolution of conversation and some observations at the end about oxytocin, the “cuddle hormone” that apparently bubbles away nicely during and after a good chat. Less appealing are the author’s self-help prescriptions—lists of dos and don’ts and anecdotes about people who did X and Y ensued. Some of the sections seem more fitting for an in-flight magazine than for a serious discussion of…discussion.
A thin broth containing a few chunky morsels.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-54002-5
Page Count: 230
Publisher: Twelve
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2009
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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