Not a classic—Mowat's talent hadn't yet matured, and Angus wasn't of Farley's stature as a writer—but a bracing reminder of...
A one-of-a-kind book, and with a misleading authorship—for this is actually a collection of correspondence between Mowat, one of Canada's most popular and cantakerous writers, and his novelist-librarian father during the harrowing World War II years of 1942-45.
As these letters begin, Mowat is in Italy, slogging through the trenches, nearly burnt out from "coming of age in a world gone mad.'' His letters home crackle with nervous energy and undisciplined intelligence. He writes of war's horrors ("something hellish has happened but all I can say for the moment is that the regiment has been to hell, and only part of it got back''); composes nature ditties ("The shy and self-effacing Mole/is happiest when in a hole''); and recounts his loves and ambitions, last night's shelling, life in the trenches, his lust for books and typewriter ribbon. Angus Mowat writes back with salvos of love, encouragement, and humor. This, one feels, is a father-son relationship as it ought to be. Angus talks of his own military work; prods Farley to produce ("My son, don't let your writing go, no matter what happens''); and dreams of a writing duet ("if it could only come down to two of us pecking at two typewriters in two cabins at two ends of some little island''). Two lives unfold: Angus publishes a novel that he sends to Farley, who doesn't like it but won't say so; Farley, at war's end, gets embroiled in a comic attempt to retrieve German armaments for a Canadian museum. Mom sends a few missives, touching in their tenderness. But what's important here aren't events but a relationship—the preserved voices, one cranky-old, the other cranky-young, of two men bound together by blood and words.
Not a classic—Mowat's talent hadn't yet matured, and Angus wasn't of Farley's stature as a writer—but a bracing reminder of what really matters.Pub Date: Jan. 11, 1993
ISBN: 0-395-65029-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1992
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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