Freelance writer MatÇ's diatribe on the ills of the modern world serves up little in the way of originality, trotting out and castigating well-known villains—with a little too much cuteness and way too much glibness to be taken seriously. MatÇ isn't impressed as he surveys the state of our industrial society. We are desperately short on compassion, love, and vision; we suffer humiliating and trying jobs; live lives of little modesty, wisdom, sharing, or mystery. Our priorities are haywire, our land sacked, lives squandered, alienation complete. MatÇ's prescription is to scale back, to get simple, free, and passionate. His points can make good sense, and he can be engagingly brash. Worse, he can also be insulting, with his humor sophomoric, his sense of history woefully opportunistic, his own high regard infuriating, and his rural romanticism extreme. Does MatÇ really believe that ``in any poor country, where children rarely have a toy, with shacks for homes, rags for clothes, rice and beans year in and out, their eyes glow full of life''? And he won't win many converts when he scolds, ``I realize that most of you will recoil in mortal terror at the mere thought of having torn from you the wonders of the city—Dunkin' Donuts....'' The author casts his net of derision too broadly: We are all caught up in it, regardless of viewpoint or behavior. In the end, more time is spent ranting than envisioning, and a picture of the future never emerges. If MatÇ had been able somewhat to temper his own zeal, he might have claimed his place in the call for a sane world. As it is, his many good points expire as readers leave feeling unnecessarily insulted and confused.
Pub Date: Feb. 15, 1993
ISBN: 0-920256-25-2
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1992
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
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
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