Would-be writers will find this both useful and inspiring, while general readers can simply enjoy Livesey’s keen insights...
From the noted creative writing teacher and novelist, a smart, unpretentious guide to “writing the life, shaping the novel.”
The eponymous hidden machinery is twofold: the nuts and bolts of craft, which give a novel form and function, and “the secret psychic life of the author,” which shapes its emotional undercurrents. Livesey (Fiction/Iowa Writers’ Workshop; Mercury, 2016, etc.) concentrates initially on technique, beginning with the lessons she learned from Irish novelist Brian Moore when she was an aspiring writer waitressing in Toronto: “the actual words…make all the difference” and “every sentence matter[s].” Employing a winningly confidential first-person voice, Livesey uses her own struggles and examples ranging from Jane Austen to Jane Smiley to elucidate such basics as creating character and writing dialogue as well as more intangible elements like developing a clear aesthetic. A fascinating chapter on “How to Tell a True Story” categorizes literature on a continuum ranging from “fiction,” in which every element is carefully designed to create a coherent overall impact, and “antifiction,” which emulates the messy confusion of real life and seeks to make readers feel “that the events described really had occurred.” It’s characteristic of Livesey’s inclusive spirit that she does not privilege one over the other but explores each as a strategy that suits different kinds of materials and goals. “We are always seeking authority for our work,” she writes. “The question is what the source will be.” Admirers of the author’s fiction will enjoy glimpses of the autobiographical elements underpinning it: a mother who died young (Eva Moves the Furniture), a detested stepmother (the story “Learning by Heart”), a miserable four years in boarding school (The Flight of Gemma Hardy), and a difficult relationship with her father, as yet not resolved into art but the subject of the moving pages that close the book’s final chapter on “navigating the shoals of research.”
Would-be writers will find this both useful and inspiring, while general readers can simply enjoy Livesey’s keen insights and engaging prose.Pub Date: July 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-941040-68-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Tin House
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2017
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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