An often diverting analysis of the deeper meaning of some odd cultural artifacts.
In this collection of semiserious semiotic essays, Rome (Travel for STOICS, 2018) examines symbols in everyday American life.
Myths, symbols, and archetypes are often associated with the study of dusty works of literature, but they’re also part of our daily existence. Rome aims to point out a few highlights in this new collection, which explores the not-so-obvious symbolic meanings of objects and activities in contemporary American culture. Indoor sky diving, for example, may be an attempt to re-create the ancient dream of flying—whose meaning remains much debated—in waking life. Fidget spinners, she conjectures, could simply be the latest manifestation of a triskelion motif that has appeared in cultures worldwide since the Stone Age. The ancient Hindu concept of the avatar—a material manifestation of a god—has been borrowed by movies, video games, and social media, she notes. As the author writes in her introduction, the book “aspires to be the early third millennium’s answer to [Roland Barthes’] insightful and funny work Mythologies” from 1957, which analyzed the processes of modern mythmaking. But although Rome’s prose can sometimes feel academic, it more often reads like good magazine journalism: “The 3-D archery course is strewn with life-sized, self-healing foam models of common game animals, such as deer, elk, boar, and rabbits. Other not-so-common targets include velociraptors, cobras, carp, alligators, baboons, jackalopes, and even zombies.” Winking essay titles, such as “The Roller Coast Ride as Aristotelian Narrative” and “The Eyelash Curler as Monument,” reveal the author’s sense of humor, but she backs them up with well-considered arguments. The essays are short—some are only three or four pages long—and they vary in quality; one, about Segway scooters, for instance, feels closer to a product review than a piece of cultural criticism. Overall, this isn’t a collection for everyone, but those with analytical predilections—and perhaps a liberal arts degree—will find much to intrigue and amuse them.
An often diverting analysis of the deeper meaning of some odd cultural artifacts.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-9678995-4-1
Page Count: 152
Publisher: Blue Morpho Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
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
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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