As edited and richly introduced by Mencken scholar Rodgers, these are the charming, often rambunctious letters between Mencken and star-crossed Sara Haardt, his admirer and later his wife. In wavering health, Sara was a 24-year-old Alabama short-story writer, budding novelist and poet in 1923 when she first wrote for advice from Mencken. He was 42, author of The American Language and coeditor with George Jean Nathan of The Smart Set, and literary dictator of the United States. A devoted beer-drinker and tippler despite Prohibition, Mencken was also the nation's most renowned flower of bachelorhood, witty indeed about husband hunters and the demerits of marriage, and the most unlikely man to fall for a young Southern charmer. But, as the reader quickly sees, Sara had everything: beauty, wit, open-minded agnosticism, a brilliant pen and—as doctors told him when he married her in 1930—only three years to live. She lived five. The happily surprised reader finds "The Bad Boy from Baltimore" on his absolutely best behavior in every letter and growing ever more lovable as the correspondence moves forward year by year (Sara died in 1935). They seem to have been bonded by his editorial remarks on her work, his guidance of her career, restaurants, and considerable bourbon, rum and beer. Their sex life appears gallantly platonic until marriage, despite many unchaperoned meetings in the country and elsewhere. Mencken would give her notes for revising her novels and stories, tips on the best ways to approach editors for various magazines. He was also helpful in getting her a job in Hollywood, where she was a scriptwriter at Paramount. Meanwhile, Mencken went off to cover political conventions and wrote her cracklingly funny letters. The marriage seems to have been sheer delight, aside from the tubercular writing on the wall and her hospitalizations. Moving and lively, an epistolary Southern beauty-and-the-beast, with a very sad ending.
Pub Date: Jan. 19, 1986
ISBN: 0385419805
Page Count: 580
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1986
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
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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