There are enough chuckles and guffaws in Morris' autobiography to make it one of the unexpectedly funny books of the year. To be sure, some of the humor—as well as the melodrama—derives from the chimps, bats, pythons, and other fauna who were guests on the television "Zootime" series Morris masterminded midway in his career, or from the animals who were his charges while he was Curator of Mammals at the London Zoo. There are academic foibles and hijinks, too, such as the time Prince Akihito of Japan and entourage squeezed into Morris' lab to catch him beside the one foul-smelling, slime-bottomed aquarium he hadn't had time to clean. After an interminable silence came the inevitable question—to which Morris found himself replying, "In this tank we are maturing the substratum." Clearly Morris enjoys telling a story on himself, and on Lorenz, Tinbergen, and other ethology greats. Between laughs, however, we do get a distinct picture of young Morris, an only child whose father died the year he was sent off to boarding school; a boy early turned on to nature and to art. He painted, dabbling in surrealism, but finally gained a first in zoology and the chance to work under Tinbergen at Oxford (where his future wife was an undergraduate). It is clear that Morris also realized early on that he was torn between academic scholarship and the itch to make broad generalizations before a large popular audience—characteristics which eventually led to the notoriety of The Naked Ape, The Human Zoo, and Intimate Behavior. If nothing else, the autobiography presents Morris in richer perspective. We see the student with the well-trained eye of the naturalist able to conduct field experiments of migrating toads or courting sticklebacks. We see the dedicated animal lover, eager to educate the public about the true ways of animals, and to improve the lot of pets and zoo-dwellers. Overall, Morris emerges as a more likable and sensitive soul than one would imagine in the light of the simplistic hypotheses of his popular works.
Pub Date: July 29, 1980
ISBN: 0553148966
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1980
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
© 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.
