More convincing evidence that Wood is a unique literary critic: deeply informed, passionately committed, and unrelenting.
The veteran New Yorker book critic returns with a collection of erudite pieces dating to 1997.
Wood (Literary Criticism/Harvard Univ.; Upstate, 2018, etc.) offers another selection of his incisive work; only a half-dozen pieces here have not appeared in previous collections. Those familiar with the author’s style will not find much surprising in that regard. Throughout this latest gathering, we see indications of his vast reading, summaries (sometimes lengthy) of key works, connections to other works by other writers in other times and places, and a willingness to identify the good, the bad, the ugly, the best, and the greatest. In this volume, there is only one essay that is principally negative: a review of the writing of Paul Auster. “There are things to admire in Auster’s fiction,” writes Wood, “but the prose is never one of them, though he is routinely praised for the elegance of his sentences.” But other writers receive Wood’s deep appreciation: Saul Bellow (“probably the greatest writer of American prose of the twentieth century”), Dickens, Chekhov, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Orwell, Austen—these and others have earned Wood’s almost undiminished admiration. Other writers also come off well, with a mild reservation now and then (Virginia Woolf, Melville). As Wood’s readers well know, he delights in introducing them to new voices from places they probably didn’t expect—among them, Bohumil Hrabal (Czechoslovakia), László Krasznahorkai (Hungary), and Elena Ferrante (Italy). Wood, however, does not directly address the issue of reading in translation. Less literarily inclined readers will admire his personal essays, many of which are profoundly moving and/or eye-opening. These include an account of his move from England to the United States, a tribute to his late father-in-law’s library, and his electric appreciation and dissection of the drumming of The Who’s Keith Moon.
More convincing evidence that Wood is a unique literary critic: deeply informed, passionately committed, and unrelenting.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-374-26116-0
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Dec. 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
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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