The multiplicity of the contemporary world breeds pedants and gurus: we need the former to show us the weaving, the latter so we may behold the design. Occasionally these differing, functions come in one outsize personality, like the celebrated Marshall McLuhan. We never see the element we are immersed in, says McLuhan—at least, we don't until we take some perspective on it, an aerial view, perhaps, which brings things in close-up: (the "mosaic" of the daily newspaper, for instance) or which expands into panoramic largesse (the "landscape" of the mind, "model" of the universe, and so forth). Not exactly novel terms or ideas, of course, but they are peculiar to McLuhan, and it's nice to see, as this retrospective (1943-1962) selection of literary criticism demonstrates, that he's been using them for quite a while. Here he is on Ulysses, which because it all takes place on one day he likens to a newspaper: "The frankly newspaperish aspect of this epic derives from the speculations of Mallarme who regarded the press as a new kind of popular poetry. . . . History is abolished not by being disowned but by becoming present." This sounds iconoclastic (and a little raffish: Mallarme's hierarchy of values, Joyce's myth-making—these do not appear to "fit" McLuhan's insight); but, never fear, McLuhan (pedant as well as guru) is sanely anchored to tradition. Thus in his interesting essays on Keats (the "music" of the language) and Tennyson (the "picturesque" idiom) he celebrates the Romantic movement as a continuing experience, and even designates Coleridge as the prototype of Cubist discontinuity. Like the Kennedys, McLuhan is a New Frontiersman with conservative tastes; like them, he has had his moment of glory. His prose is most dazzling when most inexplicable; he feeds our fancies.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1969
ISBN: 1111521646
Page Count: -
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1969
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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