A light-footed but penetrating survey of the land of the Other that rebukes the artificial weightiness of later French...
A surrealist’s 1936 diary of a voyage meant to recapitulate Jules Verne’s classic fantasy of modern travel. Gilbert’s translation is accompanied by a new introduction explaining the author’s relationship with his companion, Marcel Khill.
Cocteau’s casual travelogue begins with an homage to the influence of Verne’s 1873 yarn on what he claims was a whole generation of French schoolboys. Inspired by his young friend’s suggestion that they honor Verne’s centenary by re-enacting Phileas Fogg’s wager, the middle-aged poet—not yet a filmmaker—finds himself embarked on a frantic jaunt through the antiquities of Italy, Greece, and Egypt, the ports and opium dens of South Asia, the theaters and geisha-houses of Japan, and the glittering confections of the US. Apart from a significant encounter with Charlie Chaplin (whom Cocteau apparently worshiped) the adventures recounted are less spectacular than the texture of Cocteau’s wonderfully lush yet economical descriptions of great cities and their underworlds. Interspersed with his minute observations are mediations on beauty, death, colonialism, sex, race, and vulgarity, all shaped by the poetic bemusement of a Westerner noting “with what vast reserves of energy the Orient can challenge an exhausted Europe.” To a modern American ear, the dated English translation occasionally thrusts itself annoyingly into the foreground—conventions for rendering dialect or pidgin are particularly egregious—and seem to occlude the rhythms of the French original. As reminders of the complexity of East-West relations, these lapses of translation heighten the cultural interest of the text, yet they resonate oddly with the highly biographical cast of the introduction (which concentrates on Cocteau’s opium addiction, the unswervingly homosexual character of his liaison with Khill, and the contribution of this peculiar adventure to his artistic career). Though informative and empathetic in its own way, Callow’s reading entirely ignores the rich cross-cultural questions raised by the text.
A light-footed but penetrating survey of the land of the Other that rebukes the artificial weightiness of later French cultural criticism.Pub Date: July 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-86064-592-5
Page Count: 266
Publisher: I.B. Tauris
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
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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