This elegant but overly cautious study of Mann concentrates on narrating how the Nobel Prizewinning German novelist, caught in the mid-20th century's maelstroms, stepped forward to become a spokesman for enlightened humanism. Prater (A Ringing Glass: The Life of Rainer Maria Rilke, not reviewed, etc.) seeks neither to amass a psychological profile nor to recapture the subtleties of Mann's literary skill. Instead, he chronicles his subject's public career as a man of letters, analyzing how historical events altered Mann's trajectory—and how Mann, in turn, sought to shape history. To this end, Prater devotes the bulk of his pages to examining Mann's life after his emigration from Germany in the first years of Hitler's regime. That said, some passages about his earlier life turn brevity to advantage—for instance, in Prater's cogent explanation of the complicated scandal over Mann's story ``The Blood of the Walsungs,'' which featured an anti-Semitic caricature of his wife's family. Prater writes insightfully about issues that concerned the private Mann, such as his homoerotic fantasy life, here usefully placed in historical context. He is also good on Mann's engagement with his fiction, giving a particularly lucid account of the difficult composition of Doctor Faustus. Most importantly, he succeeds at his chief project: tracing how Mann managed his literary celebrity while evolving out of the German nationalist sentiments of his youth toward an internationalist socialism. A thoughtful epilogue recommends that we reassess the significance and accuracy of Mann's political thought in the wake of the historical revelations of 1989, but Prater declines to spice his narrative with such assessment. Prater's solid work on Mann's public life complements the more personal portrait offered in Ronald Hayman's biography (p. 132). True illumination, however, awaits someone who will take these two aspects together and add the missing ingredient: imaginative spark.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-19-815861-0
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1995
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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