A throwaway line from an essay on amnesia sums up this standout collection: “I followed the higher principle of pleasure,...
One of America’s most accomplished writers looks back between the pages of other writers' books.
Lethem (A Gambler’s Anatomy, 2016, etc.) is no stranger to books, between working in bookstores and writing regularly about them for venues like the New Yorker and Harper’s. Here, novelist Boucher (Golden Delicious, 2016, etc.) fondly curates a thoughtful and often sly collection of Lethem’s thoughts on books, films, and other works of art culled from the past two decades. The essays, reviews, and other ephemera are divided into sections, ranging from “Engulf and Devour” (books in the literary canon) to “Lost Worlds” (long-lost gems). One of the delights is Lethem’s personal voice, often laced with arch humor but absent the jarring postmodern irony that sometimes marks writers at McSweeney’s. The author also lacks literary pretension, tackling titans like Kafka, Melville, and Dickens but also penning tributes to Rod Serling and Batman. There are affectionate pieces about Walter Tevis’ obscure sci-fi novel Mockingbird (1980) and the late novelist Thomas Berger. Occasionally, there’s self-conscious commentary, as in Lethem’s footnote on Kazuo Ishiguro in which he admits he’s embarrassed by some of these pieces. He also offers a wonderful triptych of stories about Philip K. Dick, whom Lethem dubs a “necessary writer, in the someone-would-have-had-to-invent-him sense…American Literature’s Lenny Bruce.” There are some strange experiments—e.g., a feature written entirely in footnotes, the last of which reads “I’m not making any of this fucking shit up.” Another imagines an interview between the director Spike Jonze and the fictional character Perkus Tooth from Lethem’s Chronic City (2009). Fans may also enjoy Lethem’s encounters with writers he admires, ranging from affectionate memories of Philip Roth to a caustic encounter with Anthony Burgess.
A throwaway line from an essay on amnesia sums up this standout collection: “I followed the higher principle of pleasure, tried to end where I’d started: with writing I loved and wanted to recommend to someone else. That is to say, you.”Pub Date: March 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-61219-603-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Melville House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 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
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
