Simon brings a learned hand to this bright history of the circus, which emblazons as it preserves the magic.
From the Roman arena to the Pickle Family, Simon (Emerita, English/Skidmore Coll.; Coco Chanel, 2011, etc.) explores the tropes and stylings of the many-headed creature known as the circus.
When you come down to it, writes the author, the “body as spectacle is the origin of the circus.” She locates that origin, of a performer surrounded by a crowd of spectators, in the Roman arena—not in the gladiator fights or the chariot races but in the light diversion between the carnage: funambulists, tumblers, jugglers and acrobats. The performers eventually branched out, accompanied by dancing turkeys, climbing monkeys and walking dogs, to rites, festivals and fairs, gathering steam and polish as they competed with the theater and opera. As a popular pastime, they would flaunt the wild and subversive, and the clown would emerge from the itinerant troupes of bawdy characters performing pantomimes. Throughout, Simon demonstrates her understanding that circuses are mystical and complex, full of dazzle and escapism, both social and sexual—for who did not want to possess one of those fine bodies on exhibition? In a not-so-surprising turn of events, the upper crust got involved, with nobles taking to the ring and leotard: “The cult of gymnastics, many critics held, was motivated not by a desire to improve health but rather by anxiety over the degeneration of the race, specifically of the wealthy and privileged.” As the author travels back and forth from the intimate one-ring European circuses to the three-ring big top, she plucks out certain elements to highlight: the grand entrances of circuses to towns or cities; the individual feats of the human cannonball, equilibrist, contortionist and stunt riders; and the grift and vulgarity that sparked the sanctimony of the moralists. The book also contains dozens of illuminating photographs that complement the text.
Simon brings a learned hand to this bright history of the circus, which emblazons as it preserves the magic.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2014
ISBN: 978-1780233581
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 8, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2014
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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