A disappointing glimpse of things to come, from a poet and essayist (Spirit of Place; Of Chiles, Cacti, and Fighting Cocks- -both 1990, etc.) who ought to know better. The six essays collected here (from Harper's, Chronicles of Culture, etc.) all address the ``new order'' that Turner sees at hand, and attempt to provide an outline of how its philosophy, culture, economy, etc., will differ from anything to be found today—or, for that matter, ever before. ``Globalism'' is the watchword throughout: Simplified methods of communication and travel, Turner observes, have brought disparate changes into easy proximity, thus demanding new concepts of ``nation'' and ``race'' and undermining ancient hierarchies of thought and behavior: ``This book is an attempt...to articulate the spirit of the new epoch which will succeed modernism, and towards which postmodernism is an uneasy phase of transition.'' Unfortunately, Turner's articulation is meandering and self-absorbed to a fault. His first piece (``The Universal Solvent'') begins as a meditation on interculturalism, stumbles into an examination of the broadcasting medium, and tries to tie its themes together by an invocation of the earth's ecology (since ``we are Nature, and Nature is ourselves''). The essay ``Tempest, Flute, and Oz'' is an exegesis of Shakespeare, Mozart, and L. Frank Baum, and purports to show how modern science will provide us with a new myth of God as a sort of aging patriarch who has turned the business over to his children. The rest of the book deals with Martian colonization as a means of ``self-discovery'' (a not-very-original reworking of the old ``frontier theory''), artificial intelligence as a key to epistemology, and the ``big bang'' theory of creation. Turner seems unable to find a theme, playing with ideas rather developing them. As a collection of aphorisms, this has some merit, but there is insufficient focus for the sort of exposition that the author clearly intends.
Pub Date: Aug. 20, 1991
ISBN: 0-89255-159-3
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1991
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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