During the last three years of his life, an often-bitter but raunchily vigorous Henry Miller (in California) wrote some affectionate, hyperbolic letters to old New York friend Irving Stettner, editor of the tiny avant-garde magazine Stroker—along with a few prose pieces for the shoestring, Dada-ish publication. In the letters gathered here Miller reports on his eye and heart trouble ("I think it's psychosomatic because I am in the throes of deep love"); he calls up memories of Stettner's Second Ave. neighborhood; he rails against the literary establishment, ponders I. B. Singer's Nobel acceptance speech (as for HM's own Nobel chances, "I'll probably be fucked again"), and salutes the favorite books of his childhood (including Pierre Loti); mostly, however, he encourages Stettner about the magazine—with lavish praise for his poems and water-colors. As for the essays and stories, they're a spotty, mixed handful. A piece called "Memory and Forgettery" has a flicker of Saroyanesque, free-associative charm. ("You can forget Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but not the guy who got you out of a scrape or saved your life with a little chicken feed.") A few childhood reminiscences—especially about theatergoing in Brooklyn circa 1905—are diverting. But the others are Miller at his most self-indulgent: a tribute to friend Tommy Trantino's Lock the Lock ("a huge, a gargantuan piece of shit coming straight from a genius, from his mouth and from his ass-hole"); a wretched short story of male-female relations (men want "cunt," women want love); and a 1968 diatribe against the violence in Bonnie and Clyde—calling instead for "a rash of erotic, pornographic, or obscene films." Minor Miller, to put it generously—but intriguing evidence, nonetheless, of his late-octogenarian zest and warmth.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1983
ISBN: 0811208915
Page Count: 132
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1983
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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