The playwright's latest collection of short, loosely written essays (after The Cabin, 1992) puts his trademark one-upmanship and Chicago machismo on theatrical/literary criticism, reminiscences, and social commentary. Both Mamet's subjects and attitudes will be familiar. Once again, with varying degrees of deliberation, he puts his stamp on stage and screen, men and women, gambling and competition, diners and restaurants, Jewishness and the American cultural mind. His reminiscences are pleasantly sentimental and nostalgic, especially on his theatrical apprenticeship, toiling away at captions for a girlie magazine, and his bygone favorite eatery. His masculine disposition is well represented: ``The Diner'' defines the art of hanging out (and writing) in places called the Idle-Hour and Coffee-Corner, and the Hemingwayesque ``Deer Hunting'' articulates Mamet's own sportsman's experience. For all the other essays' easygoing style, his social criticism by comparison smarts with intractable harshness, Juvenalian vigor, and not a little chutzpah. After castigating Hollywood screenwriting and showbiz nudity, Mamet condemns the same cheap desire for entertainment hidden in Nixon's funeral, the Oklahoma bombing, and Washington's Holocaust Memorial. Like his plays' dialogues, Mamet's essays argue purposively and energetically from an exaggerated viewpoint in a kind of preemptive challenge to his readers' responses. In general, although there are stand-outs among these pieces (which have been published in venues as varied as Playboy, the New York Times Magazine, and the Land's End mail-order catalog), none are quite as good as those in Some Freaks or Writing in Restaurants. Characteristically provocative, amusing, and messy, Mamet's latest collection of essays deliver wit, insight, and truculence in small, mixed doses.
Pub Date: June 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-316-54340-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1996
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
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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