Relevant but reductive.
In a three-volume set, Klees boils down an estimable collection of legend, lore and literature in an attempt to make classic writings relevant to today.
In composing his new anthology, Klees retells (often in truncated form) some 110 well-known stories. Each twice-told tale is accompanied by a succinct moral that delivers to the reader in quick strokes what the author believes to be the tale’s ethical content. In the process, he brings together a wide-ranging and fascinating variety of stories that draw upon the mythology of many nations and cultures, from Native American lore (“The Legend of Hiawatha”) to biblical myth (the story of Job) to more modern prose (Twain’s Tom Sawyer). Most frequently, Klees simply paraphrases extant material–a sometimes dubious technique given that he pulls from some of the most enduring literature in history. However, his summaries are largely successful, thanks in no small part to a levelheaded narrative style. The author never tries to outdo his lofty predecessors, and is more likely to cleave closely–and sometimes with obsessive care–to their prose than skip out in flights of fancy. Many readers might agree with the collection’s implied thesis–that much literature and legend carries real moral weight. However, there is something oddly reductive about the project. To suggest that the some of the greatest stories ever told can be distilled to a pithy ethical statement seems simplistic and perhaps naïve. Take, as only one example, Klees’s “moral” for Leo Tolstoy’s beautifully nuanced short story “How Much Land Does a Man Need?”: “Greed is not a desirable trait. Blatant greed can be death of you.” Does the author really need to trot out the greatest Russian author of all time to deride avarice? And does such a précis do justice to what Joyce considered the best story ever written? It seems unlikely.
Relevant but reductive.Pub Date: May 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-891046-21-7
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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