Reminiscences of a time that seems golden only when seen through a beer glass. Wilcox (Uncommon Martyrs, 1991), a nice kid from the sticks, came to New York City with dreams of living the hip life in the '60s and turning out great art. To judge by this memoir, he wound up spending most of his days chasing down free drinks and cheap thrills at Manhattan dives, whose patrons he evokes with affection: ``Stanley's wife, a swollen goose egg perched on the edge of her stool, swills down oceans of vodka. She yawns, derisively, at the screwballs who love her bar. Exiles, fugitives, and chasers of shadows squeeze into Stanley's.'' It is a time of squatters' flats, ``hippie chicks,'' heroin, Bob Dylan, a time frequently measured, for Wilcox, in shot glasses. He recalls working high-building construction, always drunk (``the concrete floor of each completed deck is littered with beer cans and broken half pints of liquor''), recounts avoiding the draft by flummoxing the army psychiatrist with arguments that all people have homosexual tendencies, remembers hard days on the street, drug ripoffs, racial hatred. He has a deft touch for conjuring up the right period details, especially the inane stoned conversations that marked the era (``Hobbits got their shit together. Kind of like beats, man. Kind of like us, only better, man''). Still, although reasonably well written, the memoir carries a certain emptiness: Not much seems to have happened to Wilcox, apart from the usual bad trips and a few exceptionally nasty hangovers, and we see little self-reflection and even less self-discovery in the course of his narrative. Charles Bukowski covered this beat much better from the vantage of the West Coast; so, too, did Emmett Grogan, whose New York memoir, Ringolevio, runs rings around this book. Add this to the long been-there-done-that shelf of '60s autobiography.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1996
ISBN: 1-877946-75-3
Page Count: 172
Publisher: Permanent Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1996
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
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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