Not that Paris needs more lovers, but it’s good to know that she still overwhelms all, even the comics.
A host of literate Americans, from Ben Franklin to Dave Barry, go mostly gaga over Paris.
There’s a name for the spirit of this uneven collection—topophilia, love of place. These pieces are old familiars, but for many, their shopworn quality has burnished their power rather than dimmed it. A.J. Liebling took a date to Montparnasse, which, “although not a long walk from the Quarter, had all the attributes of a foreign country,” while David Sedaris seemed rarely to leave the movie house: “Aside from the occasional trip to the flea market, my knowledge of Paris is limited to what I learned in Gigi.” Much humor follows: Art Buchwald, Mark Twain, Dave Barry, who has a delightfully goofy conversation with a waiter, in French (“Good day. I suspect you are an American.” “But I am not wearing the sneakers!” “OK, Mr. Smarty Pants, pronounce the word ‘Rouen’ ”) and rubs shoulders with T.S. Eliot, who appears to have sat on a broomstick when he got to the city: “The right way is to take it as a place and a tradition, rather than as a congeries of people who are mostly futile and timewasting.” Thomas Jefferson figured that “had there been no queen, there would have been no revolution,” and Saul Bellow understood that even “God would be perfectly happy in France. . . . Surrounded by unbelievers, He, too, could relax toward evening, just as thousands of Parisians do in their favorite cafes.” Absurdly, food gets short shrift: even with such treasures to choose from, Lee has selected forgettable material and squandered her M.F.K. Fisher opportunity on something that can seem only, if graciously, understandable as some insider’s joke.
Not that Paris needs more lovers, but it’s good to know that she still overwhelms all, even the comics.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2003
ISBN: 1-4000-3102-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Vintage
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
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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