In a note about the title, D'Agata says that by “next” he means “the essays that might be inspired by these.” Based on this...
A sometimes challenging anthology that expands the usual definition of essay.
Iowa Workshop grad D’Agata, who collected his own unconventional essays in Halls of Fame (2001), here selects one per year starting in 1975, when he was born, bookending them with Guy Davenport’s prologue and Joe Wenderoth’s epilogue. D’Agata’s choice for 1975, John McPhee’s “The Search for Marvin Gardens,” is a relatively conventional essay by a widely read author; other choices falling into this category are Joan Didion’s “The White Album,” Susan Sontag’s “Unguided Tour,” Barry Lopez’s “The Raven,” Annie Dillard’s “Total Eclipse,” Alexander Theroux’s “Black,” and David Foster Wallace’s “Ticket to the Fair.” Some selections are fragmentary, such as Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s “Erato Love Poetry,” or stream-of-consciousness, such as Albert Goldbarth’s “Delft.” Goldbarth and Anne Carson are among several writers here who are known for their poetry at least as much as for their essays. D’Agata’s interjections between each piece sometimes comment on the year represented, sometimes discuss the author presented, sometimes appear to have nothing to do with the piece that follows. The editor is partial to making lists. He is also partial to wordplay, as when he mentions that his mother read to him while he was in the womb: “And as we now know, but did not know then, a fetus at eight weeks has developed its ears but not yet the ability to hear. What this means is that anything you read to a fetus will go in one ear, but not come out.”
In a note about the title, D'Agata says that by “next” he means “the essays that might be inspired by these.” Based on this anthology, that could mean pretty much anything.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2003
ISBN: 1-55597-375-2
Page Count: 488
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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