Lots about the difference between Japanese Buddhist aristocratic culture and Shinto popular culture—with examples from films, plays, novels, prostitution—pegged, indeed chained, to the familiar idea that "hedonism is held in check by social taboos." I.e., "what one sees on the screen, on stage and in comic-books is usually precisely the reverse of normal behavior. The morbid and sometimes grotesque taste that runs through Japanese culture—and has done so for centuries—is a direct result of being made to conform to such a strict and limiting code of normality." Nonetheless Buruma rejects the idea that the Japanese are unique: rather, they resemble Europeans of the Middle Ages. So: "while the heroes and heroines of this book tell us something about the culture that created them. . . they tell us far more about ourselves." As cultural analysis, this is neither coherent nor subtle. Buruma starts off by distinguishing between Japanese progenitors Izanagi and Izanami and Adam and Eve—or "pollution" vs. Original Sin. He likens the samurai to the European knight-errant—save for "the Christian ideal of principled, indiscriminate compassion." He seconds Ivan Morris' observation that all Japanese heroes are anachronisms. As an olla podrida of comments and description, however, this has its truths and its voyeuristic attractions. Across the board, high to low, "everyone is dressed for his or her part." While the Westerner "appeals to a sense of logic," a Japanese appeals "to his own heart." Etc. As to the Japanese underside, we visit a strip tease (which climaxes in a magnifying-glass display of genitals), take in the violent and/or pornographic plot-lines of innumerable popular entertainments, see the salary man (sheepish) at home and (randy) after hours. But with the same few, stereotypical points made over and over.
Pub Date: April 26, 1984
ISBN: 0394537750
Page Count: 284
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1984
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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