An intriguing and candid memoir that should appeal to readers interested in ’60s movements.
A spiritual instructor and author chronicles his journey from student and community organizer to lawbreaker and organic farmer in this autobiography.
Born Elliot Zeldow, Jaxon-Bear (Wake Up and Roar, 2017, etc.) grew up in Brooklyn and Queens, alternating between urban, mixed-ethnic schools and more exclusive ones with upwardly mobile Jews. He was a tough kid with street smarts who attended the University of Pittsburgh (in “a backwater steel town with a mediocre college”), where he was involved with the debate team. As a student, he traveled to Alabama to participate in civil rights marches, beginning a long involvement with social issues that continued intermittently after his graduation. Following brief stints as a steelworker, professional activist, and Ph.D. candidate—along with a short marriage to a Pittsburgh girl—Jaxon-Bear upped his involvement with drugs and crossed to the wrong side of the law on several occasions. Relying on his gift for gab and obfuscation, he avoided serious jail time on numerous occasions, setting off on spiritual journeys with more drugs than cash. He eventually met his life partner, Toni, and with their mystical and emotional connections—along with some fortuitous investments—the author achieved a respected position in his chosen field of spiritual development. With his discovery of Papaji (his guru, Zen master, and other “self”), Jaxon-Bear fully realized his spiritual odyssey. The author’s uninhibited, honest account of his life—with all of his flaws on full display—is refreshing. His early life emerges as surprisingly captivating, although readers may suspect his spiritual voyage is what he really wants to share. At times, his self-destructive, selfish behavior is wearing, particularly his firm belief in his youth (before he met Toni) that he should be exempt from monogamy because it did not suit him. Quotes and contemporary song lyrics before each chapter help set the scene for the subsequent narrative, but the book would have benefited from more introspection on Jaxon-Bear’s part. Too often it seems that he was just swept along with the times, without giving thought to what he was doing.
An intriguing and candid memoir that should appeal to readers interested in ’60s movements.Pub Date: April 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-692-59987-7
Page Count: 322
Publisher: New Morning Books
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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