Kay (English/Oxford) calls his chronicle of Shakespeare's life, work, and times a ``modest'' presentation for the ``curious''—which apparently excuses him from scholarly rigor as well as from considering recent Shakespearean research and theories. ``Every age,'' Kay begins, ``creates the Shakespeare, or Shakespeares it needs.'' The Shakespeare he displays—assembled from public records of christenings, weddings, deaths, real-estate transactions, and law cases—is a businessman, a crafty materialist who occasionally wrote plays. True, there is little primary information extant about the Elizabethan playwright: no letters, diaries, journals, or even accurate portraits. But having abandoned the ``academic Shakespeare industry,'' Kay offers little to replace it. He provides some useful but commonplace information—about the fortunes of various acting companies and the influence of King James I on literary life—and plot summaries. But the ``lost'' years, 1579-92, from school to Shakespeare's dramatic success (the ``implied parallel'' with the same period in Christ's life ``hardly needs to be dwelt on too closely''), are simply dismissed, like all the other mysteries that comprise the Shakespeare myth. The sonnets, Kay contends, had nothing to do with Shakespeare's amorous life: They were written for a patron in an assumed voice. Nor is there any concern here about how an itinerant actor with little education could have translated the lives of Plutarch into the Roman plays, the complexities of court life into the histories, and the subtleties of human feeling into the romances. While it's legitimate to reject the ``off-putting apparatus of scholarly references,'' there has to be some reasonable substitute: originality, style, perception, depth—none of which surfaces here.
Pub Date: Nov. 20, 1992
ISBN: 0-688-12024-5
Page Count: 363
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1992
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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