An overambitious and underwrought attempt to explain the context, obstacles, and achievements of every woman ever to have a career in pop music. British music journalist O'Brien (Annie Lennox, not reviewed, etc.) trots out a handful of unsurprising themes: Women historically have been expected to be decorative ``girl singers,'' not serious musicians; jealous or nervous men have limited the careers of female instrumentalists; women are often at the mercy of sexist record company packaging; black women encounter different obstacles than white women; Madonna is an admirable careerist. O'Brien supports these assertions by quoting from her interviews with dozens of women in the industry, including a few luminaries, such as Nina Simone, Alison Moyet, and Cyndi Lauper. Generally, though, the list of those she has spoken to over the years is weighted heavily toward the British and the obscure. And because she's aiming at encyclopedic definitiveness, it's impossible not to notice the arbitrariness of her biographical snippets and her scattershot forays into analysis. ``Like an inverted saint, [SinÇad O'Connor] has followed the edicts of her own faith to come up with a pure spirituality both piercingly original and tender,'' she offers pointlessly; and while elsewhere she discusses Prince's influence on women in pop, nowhere does she mention O'Connor's biggest hit, the Prince-penned ``Nothing Compares 2 U.'' One such omission would be a quibble, but the book is built on holes like these. O'Brien's most incisive chapter, on women in punk, illuminates the anarchic freedoms that punk allowed women, as well as the old gender prejudices that paradoxically underlay punk's would-be anarchy. Too often, however, this reads like a catchall for whatever stray reference material came to hand. Until a more astute overview comes along, She Bop—whose title comes from a song about masturbation—makes for an unsatisfying stopgap. (b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Jan. 9, 1996
ISBN: 0-14-025155-3
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
Alexander sets a standard of thoroughness for future works on Paton, but the treasures unearthed by his impressive research are few and far between in this tell-too-much biography. Published in 1948, Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country was a major force in drawing international attention to both literature and apartheid in South Africa. This comprehensive account covers his boyhood; his university years; his teaching career; his long tenure as principal of a reformatory; his emergence as a novelist and persecuted political figure; and his second marriage and later life. Alexander (English/Univ. of New South Wales) knew Paton and had the cooperation of his widow and two sons. His exclusive access to intimate diaries and correspondence allows him to fill out and correct Paton's autobiographies and various memoirs of him by friends and family. He counters Paton's published assertions that he was a lenient teacher by presenting the future novelist as a despised schoolmaster whose students went so far as to cheer wildly when he was nearly blinded by a chemistry demonstration gone awry. Alexander also covers Paton's extramarital affairs, of which he had at least two, and his first, sexually unfulfilling marriage to a widow who wore the wedding band from her first marriage. Since Paton did not write Cry, the Beloved Country until he was in his 40s, much of the story centers on the novelist's frustrated political ambitions. After becoming a celebrated author, much of his political work was organizational and not really the stuff of exciting storytelling. Alexander tries to show Paton as a man who cared most about serving others, but the dominant narrative thread portrays a self-assuming, sometimes calculating man. Paton achieved the rare feat of writing a novel that perceptively changed the way people looked at part of the world. His own story, however, turns out to be mundane. (8 pages b&w photos)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-19-811237-8
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
The spawn of Seinlanguage: shticky meditations by a stand-up comic who now stars in a top-rated television show. As Tim Taylor, Allen is the focal point of Home Improvement, but his manly-man persona plays off his wife, ``Tool Time'' cohorts, and other characters. Here we have Allen solo, closer to the stand-up mode, musing ``about many things I want to say about being a man.'' His short chapters mainly consist of riffs on his past, his humor safely in the middle American mainstream. Born Timothy Allen Dick, he learned to cope with his unusual moniker through humor and thus segues into observations genitalistic. Allen resents women saying men's cars are linked to their penises: ``What's an extension of the vagina—a purse?'' His life was transformed, he writes, by a Playboy centerfold, and he does have some wise thoughts on objectification: ``If we could have had sex with our cars and boats, it would have been a lot easier. But we'd be a smaller species.'' What should men ``look for in a gal? The answer is easy: breath.'' Allen balances such cheap laughs with some insights, suggesting that women, like men, seek glitz in a partner but eventually settle for ``the family station wagon.'' There's more: marriage, sports, and, of course, tools, leading to his innovative analysis of the impact of tool belts on butt cracks. He ends with some heartfelt sentiments on fatherhood. Allen only briefly touches on the traumas that have fueled his psyche: the death of his father in a car wreck when Tim was 11 and a prison sentence for selling drugs. (The lack of privacy in prison supplies the book's title.) More memoir and less shtick might have been a better balance here. For loyal fans, who should still be plentiful. (First printing of 500,000; first serial to TV Guide and Playboy)
Pub Date: Oct. 7, 1994
ISBN: 0-7868-6134-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
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