A ham-handed account of what had all the ingredients to be a gripping adventure tale—Sweden to Kathmandu by bicycle, trek to Everest, climb, return by same route—from Kropp, the second person to ever reach the summit of K2 without supplemental oxygen, assisted by Swedish freelance journalist Lagercrantz. Inspired by the Himalayan feats of Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler, the light-traveling by-fair-means high-altitude climbers, Kropp decides to tackle Everest with no support whatsoever. He will get wherever he has to go under his own steam, carry his own food and low-rent gear, climb unassisted by Sherpas or oxygen: “the high tech gadgets, the abandoned equipment, and the left-over, left-behind junk are a rape of nature.” But rather than this being an environmentally sound, good-spirited approach, Kropp comes across as superior, with a scary sense of purity and punishment: “I prepared for the ascent by running in the mountains above the city until I felt the taste of blood in my mouth.” The trip to Nepal is told in juddering diary entries such as “December 29 / Kashan / I get a pencillin shot in a small hospital,” and when he gets to base camp, many of the climbers disgust him: “Everest has become a luxury peak, a place for buffoons who want something to brag about at their garden parties.” (This is May 1996, and a good number of them will soon be dead.) Kropp spends too much time commenting on the conduct of others (“excuse me for gossiping”)—who is having an affair with whom, who lied about summiting what peaks—and too little building a compelling narrative about his own adventure. He climbed without oxygen, and perhaps that robbed him of the experience. He sinks his own self-righteous ship by sneering at Messner, who climbed all the high peaks without oxygen. “The sad thing is, you can tell . . . the thin air has probably damaged his brain.” “So much writing has been done about climbing—and life—at the highest altitudes.” Too much. Add this book to the ballast. (photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-56331-830-X
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1999
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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