An amusing, learned and literate look at the naked apes who populate the pages of our most celebrated fiction.
Great works of literature are great, aver the authors, in part because they accurately display human nature in all its Darwinian gore, glory and vainglory.
David P. Barash (The Mammal in the Mirror, 1999, etc.) and daughter Nanelle, a Swarthmore undergraduate, stroll through literature’s great mall and shop with ferocious good humor in all the stores whose offerings support their thesis. They find many novels and plays whose characters behave in ways that bring knowing smiles to the lips of these acolytes of Darwin. Othello and others of his jealous ilk are a lot like elk or elephant seals. Jane Austen (“the poet laureate of female choice”) writes about women who, except for their dress and the social constraints of Victorian England, are not unlike other primates—or peahens, for that matter. Men are unfaithful because, like gorillas, they all want harems; they desire young virgins because then the father can be certain that’s his baby in the womb. Female bluethroats (birds), even those who are supposedly “mated” to another, will flock eagerly around males whose blue throats have been artificially brightened. This helps explain the famously adulterous Madame Bovary and Kate Chopin’s Edna Pontellier. Evolution explains why we prefer our kin to other folks, why stepchildren (and stepparents) have a difficult time finding acceptance, why teenagers and parents will always be at one another’s black-and-blue throats, why males and females bond, making possible our bountiful supply of buddy novels and films. The authors discuss an impressive array of literary works, mostly standard pieces from the Western canon. Heavily represented are Shakespeare, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Austen and Lawrence (whose Lady Chatterley’s Lover comes in for some harsh treatment). But they also provide interesting discussions of Frank Norris, Amy Tan, Jonathan Franzen and August Wilson. One grievous misattribution: Ringo, not Paul, sang “I Get by with a Little Help from My Friends.”
An amusing, learned and literate look at the naked apes who populate the pages of our most celebrated fiction.Pub Date: May 3, 2005
ISBN: 0-385-33801-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005
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
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
