On the whole, a helpful guide to the book as a Rorschach blot of a singular Romantic temperament.
Everyone knows Jane Eyre is an autobiographical novel, but where does roman end and à clef begin?
Few books feed reality hunger more than Charlotte Brontë’s 19th-century masterpiece, whose deeply observant narrator speaks in such a direct voice that she seems to bear witness to lived events. As Pfordresher (English/Georgetown Univ.; Jesus and the Emergence of a Catholic Imagination: An Illustrated Journey, 2008, etc.) argues, that’s because it is the work of an author who only wrote what she knew. Accepting Brontë’s assertion that she never described any “feeling, on any subject, public or private,” that wasn’t genuine, he adroitly follows the paper trail of her letters to demonstrate that the novel draws from both actual events and deeply repressed emotions. He finds a lot of Brontë both in Jane and in Rochester’s mad wife; both author and character “lived on the borderline of madness, and there are moments of anguish when its darkness takes over.” As previous biographers have long noted, the horrible experience of the Brontë sisters at the Clergy Daughter’s School at Cowan Bridge was closely duplicated in Lowood Institution in the novel; the parallels were so close and obvious it even caused a minor scandal. Pfordresher is more interesting when the relation between fact and fiction is less obvious, such as in the creation of Jane’s classic love interest, Rochester. While the clearest real-life source appears to be a married professor whom Brontë could never have, Pfordresher sees evidence also in her doomed brother Branwell, as well as literary models such as Lord Byron’s Giaour and John Milton’s Satan from Paradise Lost. There's a certain literal-mindedness to Pfordresher's approach, however, and his insistence that everything in the book has traceable real-life coordinates isn’t always convincing. Does Jane flee Rochester because Brontë was in some overwrought emotional state or because the story simply demanded this change of pace?
On the whole, a helpful guide to the book as a Rorschach blot of a singular Romantic temperament.Pub Date: June 27, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-393-24887-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
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
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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