An anthology that reads like a long, engaging annual magazine.
An eclectic annual that will leave readers marveling over many of the discoveries and puzzling over the inclusion of a few.
The most category-defying of The Best American Series once again finds noted author Eggers (A Hologram for the King, 2012, etc.) listed as editor while serving more as teacher/mentor/ringleader for the high school class that is “voluntary and extracurricular and very simple: We read and discuss contemporary writing.” The anthology emerges from those discussions, and if its proudly proclaimed “nonrequired reading” status makes it something other than the year’s essential American writing, it at least gives a hint as to what a bunch of bright, responsive high school readers have found particularly compelling. Very much a product of its time, the anthology encompasses, among other things, graphic narratives, manifestos and reports from the various “Occupy” outposts, the eulogy for Apple’s Steve Jobs by his sister, Mona Simpson, the variety of phone responses elicited by a flyer requesting “If anyone wants to talk about anything, call me,” “Best American Lonely Guy” and pieces of long-form journalism about the complex lives and identities of real-life superheroes. There is zombie fiction from Jess Walter, inscrutable fiction from George Saunders and some pieces that leave it to readers to determine whether they are fiction or not. Perhaps the most powerful is “Redeployment” by Phil Klay, a Marine Iraqi vet with a master’s degree in creative writing and a collection of stories due. “We shoot dogs,” it starts. “Not by accident.” It then proceeds to detail what soldiers find when they return from battle—empty houses, broken marriages, lives that seem surreal, dogs that need to be put down. All readers will find their own favorites that justify the collection as a whole.
An anthology that reads like a long, engaging annual magazine.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-547-59596-2
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Mariner/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
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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