Those wanting a fleshed-out argument will be disappointed.
A collection for truth-seekers that covers subjects from Catholicism to Salinger.
Palmer makes a case for faith, not religion, in this collection of writings about a hodgepodge of topics. “Religion is not faith,” he says. “Religion is a group of people doing something together that hurts other people…Faith, however, is belief in God in spite of the clergy or the scientists.” He also alludes to recently published books on atheism by writers Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, whom he calls “pop-atheists,” likening them to science-fiction or fantasy writers. Palmer’s premise is interesting, and if he followed up this thesis the book would be a worthwhile read. However, what follows is a mishmash of quoted material. The quotes aren’t woven into his writing; he aligns them against each other to make a point and often doesn’t bother to extrapolate upon them. He quotes Marx, Darwin, Camus, Dorothy Parker, the Bible, Orwell and Malcom Gladwell, among others. Interspersed within the quotes are sweeping grandiose statements about the human condition, such as “people don’t want freedom,” but he doesn’t use his material to explain why individuals huddle together and use religion as a shelter. Or, if he does, he offers platitudes. The book feels pasted together, rather than a well-developed argument on his thoughts and feelings about faith. Palmer spends a chapter interpreting the Catcher in the Rye and another chapter ruminating to his great-granddaughter about the state of the world. He makes an impassioned argument for Catholicism being the one true religion, but it’s only followed-up in snippets. Perhaps if the book were redefined as a collection of his essays it might work, but it may not be entirely clear what he thinks of faith itself. It’s too buried under the quotes of others.
Those wanting a fleshed-out argument will be disappointed.Pub Date: March 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-9811-9800-2
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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