Alaska's Mount St. Elias was a mystical site to Waterman (In the Shadow of Denali, 1994, etc.), to be revered, and to be visited by fair means, without all the techno-wizardry climbers use today. To show its appreciation, the mountain beat him mercilessly. Mount St. Elias is not a trophy peak. It may be the fourth highest mountain in North America, it may stymie 70 percent of its climbers (and kill another 5 percent), but the trophy climbers want Denali. That was fine with Waterman; he preferred his mountains pure, free of the commercialization of climbing. Waterman was fascinated by the duke of Abruzzi, the aloof, melancholy, scholar-explorer who was the first to ascend St. Elias a hundred years ago, and he wanted to tackle the mountain as the duke did, though with fewer companions (just one partner) and a drastically reduced payload (no porters, for instance to carry an iron bedstead). No radios, thank you, and no flight in and out; he wanted the sanctity of the wild, to discover remnant instincts, deploy map-reading and route-finding talents, be self-sufficient. He would sail up from Seattle, climb, and return. Using diaries and letters from Abruzzi and his team, Waterman entwines his climb with the duke's, although the pleasure here is in Waterman's tale. The climbing almost immediately goes badly and then gets much worse. Crevasses lurk, nonstop avalanches thunder by, it rains watermelon-size rocks. The climbers run out of food. His companion isn't amused; then again, they survive, barely, returning without having gained the summit. Waterman's soul-searching can get trying, but he followed his dreams. In sharing them, he gives readers back some of their own. (24 b&w photos, 2 maps, not seen)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-8050-4453-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1997
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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