Like panels in the famous AIDS quilt, but restricted in scope to one small town, these interviews with residents of Provincetown, Mass., tell yet more stories of those afflicted by HIV. Braham, a writer, and Peterson, a psychologist, conducted the interviews over the course of five separate visits they made to Provincetown in 1996. Those interviewed include local nurses, counselors, clergy, social-service administrators, and volunteers. Among the mix of men and women interviewed, many are HIV-positive. What distinguishes this social-psychological account of AIDS from others are the particular features of Provincetown: its small size (permanent population of 3,300), large percentage of gay and lesbian residents, and stunning geography. The authors set the personal interviews with the HIV-infected and their caretakers against the backdrop of the town’s natural land- and seascapes, which alternately both alarm and calm the human spirit. Indicated, but not elaborated, are conflicts between different segments of the HIV-affected community over philosophies and politics of health care, and between recently arrived, relatively affluent gay men and older, often poorer residents. Though every story of battering by AIDS merits telling, the authors’ claims for the “extraordinary . . . communal response to the crisis” of AIDS in Provincetown, and the “astonishing degree of trust” they, as interviewers, received, will strike seasoned AIDS workers as grandiose. In the inverse universe of AIDS, the astonishing and extraordinary come to set the norm, whether for good or ill. In light of that, the authors’ tone could be less self-congratulatory, and the reaching for weighty metaphors less labored. Must a beach setting for cremation ceremonies be described as “gilded with ashes,” or a star-lit night as “the skin of solitude”? AIDS weighs enough already—please, dear authors, lighten up! The heavy-handed touch of the writing notwithstanding, this book does its part to meet the persisting need for both memorials and tributes to all affected by HIV.
Pub Date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 1-57129-058-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1998
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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