In the best of these recent essays, Nobelist Brodsky achieves a unique synthesis of philosophical acumen and literary craftsmanship: considering the exigencies of exile together with those of poetry, reflecting on ethics and aesthetics. Like Less Than One (1986), Brodsky's previous collection of prose, this volume opens with a collage of memories from the author's youth in Leningrad. The theme this time, however, is intimations of America: radio transmissions, lovingly preserved lend-lease remnants (Brodsky focuses on the cult of empty meat tins), and exotic imports like the RCA records, with their famous dog-at-the-gramophone label, that Brodsky's father owned. The mode of reverie that Brodsky employs in this piece serves him well elsewhere in the volume. It reappears in a pastiche of travel dreams and in impassioned reflections on a Soviet stamp honoring British double agent Kim Philby. Too often, however, Brodsky takes on an expository tone that clashes with the essentially elliptical quality of his best insights. Two commencement addresses find him at his best and worst. Whereas Brodsky offers Dartmouth graduates wise words on the unlikely topic of boredom's importance, an audience at Ann Arbor, Mich., receives a hodgepodge of bromides like ``try not to set too much store by politicians.'' Other low points include an aimless account of a decadent writer's junket to Rio and a sententious open letter to V†clav Havel. But a sterling appreciation of Thomas Hardy's subtle poetry more than compensates. Much of Brodsky's best commentary on modern poetry and politics comes indirectly, in imaginative essays devoted to classical figures: Clio, the Muse of history; Horace, the Roman man of letters; and Marcus Aurelius, philosopher and emperor. Brodsky repeatedly cites Frost's line: ``The best way out is always through.'' At his most successful, however, he seems to be following another adage: Emily Dickinson's advice to ``tell all the Truth but tell it slant.''
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-374-23415-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1995
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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