A didactic account of the author's first year of Talmud study, originally published in Hungarian in 1927 and posthumously translated. Born Joseph Klein in 1882 in the small Hungarian village of Pata, Patai (who renamed himself after his hometown) was raised in the strictly Orthodox Jewish tradition. He wore sidelocks and fringed garments, observed all the rituals, and studied the Talmud in cheder (Hebrew school) before he ever learned to read Hungarian. This study captivated him. In his chronology of a year in and out of cheder, Patai intersperses idealized memories of learning with starry-eyed recollections of Jewish life in Hungary at the end of the 19th century. He remembers the thrill of first being allowed to look into the large volume of the Talmud and then finding out what lay within: the debates, the stories, the glory, the riches of his Jewish ancestors. He glosses over the poverty and anti-Semitism that his family endured—for Patai, everything else was obscured by his passion for the magnificent old text. He tries to impress the reader with the wonder of the Talmud by describing his own awe, supplying numerous illustrations from the text itself, and telling stories of the sages with examples of their erudition, wisdom, and piety. All of this, however eloquently expressed, only gives the reader the briefest glimpse of what Patai feels for the Talmud. The effect is not so much emotional as instructional: Seen in the context provided by the author's son, Raphael Patai (The Jewish Alchemists, p. 533, etc.), in his biographical introduction to the volume, this memoir is but one of many efforts to reacquaint a nation with what Patai perceived to be its dying culture. In this, the poet, author, and editor typifies the Eastern European Haskalah, or Jewish Renaissance, which sought to revive the golden age of Judaism by recovering its heroic past. A highly romanticized paean to the Jewish tradition of learning.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8276-0517-X
Page Count: 140
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
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
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
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