Close readers of Shakespeare will respect Scarry’s arduous homework but likely won’t be convinced by her conclusions.
Who was the “young man” William Shakespeare addressed in his sonnets?
That’s the never-ending mystery wide-ranging literary scholar Scarry (Aesthetics and General Theory of Value/Harvard Univ.; Thermonuclear Monarchy: Choosing Between Democracy and Doom, 2014, etc.) sets out to resolve in her latest book. The list of contenders is already long, but Scarry comes up with a new one: Shakespeare’s contemporary Henry Constable. The author theorizes that the sonnets are, actually, only part of a conversation between the poets, who left cryptic mash notes to each other in their work. Her proof mostly amounts to highly imaginative, and sometimes unintentionally hilarious, code-breaking—such as her discovery that lines of the sonnets have the letters of Constable’s name scattered within them (not sequentially, mind you, just there). Also, a nickname for Henry is Hal, and the sonnets use words like “shall” and “halt”—and sometimes “will” is close by. Also, there’s that last name, and Shakespeare often uses “constancy” or “constant.” Constable’s own poems likewise seem to Scarry to both directly answer his genius friend and leave behind similar anagrams. Beyond the textual argument, there’s the historical possibility that their paths crossed as Elizabethan England was undergoing endless religious conflict; maybe Shakespeare even provided cover to the Catholic Constable, who returned the favor by nursing his beloved through his final illness. As a novel, like Anthony Burgess’ Nothing Like the Sun, or a movie, like Shakespeare in Love, the story has possibilities; as speculative literary detective work, it feels forced. Almost from the beginning, Scarry seems less like the redoubtable polymath of legend—whose past subjects have ranged from torture to critical care to plane crashes—and more like a mad scholar whose delusional literary criticism takes on a life of its own.
Close readers of Shakespeare will respect Scarry’s arduous homework but likely won’t be convinced by her conclusions.Pub Date: Nov. 29, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-374-27993-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 7, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
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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