Subtle, complex, elusive Henry James—a writer who saw life as a history of changing perceptions and changing masks—demands all the formidable scholarly skills and narrative art that Kaplan demonstrated in his biographies of two other monumental 19th- century figures, Charles Dickens (1988) and Thomas Carlyle (1983). More intimate than Leon Edel's magisterial Henry James (1985), this version of the novelist's life is implicitly Freudian: Flawed (a sexually nonfunctioning, hypochondriacal stammerer) but talented, James compensated through his art for his personal failings, seeking (and luckily finding) love, fame, wealth, and power through publication—though at great personal cost. After a rootless childhood, a random education, and a bewildering set of religious beliefs derived from his father, James spent his life travelling for his health and his fiction. He moved repeatedly from New York to London, Paris, Switzerland, Rome, and Venice, avoiding intimate connections, the lure of young men especially, and inventing himself as a writer among the writers he met: William Morris, George Eliot, Anthony Trollope, Stephen Crane, Joseph Conrad, Edith Wharton—to whom, in a memorable scene here, James reads Walt Whitman's poetry. Known to his family as the ``angel in the house,'' sentimental and emotional toward his male friends (at least in letters), James was rigid and artificial in public, his accent and manners an odd combination of the European culture he admired and the American values he claimed to believe in. Intensely private and self-controlled, his life was a quest for refinement and nuance, undermined by his own excess, the afflictions of his ``bowels and his back,'' and his immense hungers. Kaplan has a fine sense of scene: James trying to drown the dresses of a deceased friend, or looking at himself in the mirror. And it's as a mirror—a very Jamesian one, with its center of consciousness and unobtrusive narrator—that this fine and readable biography functions. (Twenty-four pages of b&w photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Oct. 16, 1992
ISBN: 0-688-09021-4
Page Count: 600
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 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
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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