Crotchety and erudite as ever, Thorne (Simple Cooking, 1987; Outlaw Cook, 1992) gets mired for a good third of this collection in the gravitas of his stubborn reverence for the Maine he calls home and the fugitive ethos of its foodways. He's the kind of man who takes his potatoes seriously (all of them: Early Bangor, Irish Cobbler, Levitt's Pink); ditto his beans, baked and otherwise, and his piecrusts (strictly composed of freshly rendered lard). And his barbecues—the ``serious pig'' of the title essay refers to his passion for perfection, the limitless patience for getting it just right that's the ``particularity'' of the real Mainer; as Thorne covers his usual unusual territory (farmstands, diners, folklore, old books), it's exalted into an obsession, and it won't be everyone's. An extended piece on chowders showcases his literary sensibility: He hails the `` `fishy flavor to the milk' '' described in Moby-Dick as ``a merger crying out to be made.'' Moving on to the Cajun/Creole cuisine that he cites as a secondary influence on his cookery, Thorne writes languorous socio-culinary history. He comes across at his best when he breaks out of the merely regional, whether proffering a structured sequence on the evolution of chili recipes, wittily deconstructing the original Toll House cookie recipe, examining the American perception of aging Camembert as ``rot,'' or reflecting on the seductiveness of the white loaves piled in a remembered Paris boulangerie. When not freighted with indignation-overload, Thorne's high- and-lowbrow take on the foodscape at large makes for a singular vision.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-86547-502-4
Page Count: 416
Publisher: North Point/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1996
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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