Thirty-odd essays—culled from a dozen years of published encounters between master stylist Amis (Time's Arrow, 1991, etc.) and English-speaking literati and other contemporary phenomena—in a collection as well-honed and readable as it is wide-ranging. In the title piece, a 1981 interview with Nabokov's widow in Montreaux, she appears as a distinctive yet private personality, fully engaged in the business of bolstering her late husband's literary reputation. Similar pilgrimages are conducted to Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital, for a chat with John Updike, to Monaco for an afternoon binge with the elusive Anthony Burgess, to V.S. Pritchett in London in order to marvel at his many decades of achievement, and to New York, in an unsuccessful search for Madonna on the publication of Sex. An amiable but keen-eyed raconteur, Amis reveals as much about himself as he does his subject, with impressions of the moment melded into insightful commentary on the author's work. The same is true when he turns to sports, whether accompanying a British soccer club led by owner Elton John on a junket to China, or witnessing the debut of 14-year-old Monica Seles at a tournament in Boca Raton. But his savage critical edge has its place here as well, and he skewers Madonna in her role as amoral media exploiter while painting an even grimmer portrait— from trips to the Pentagon and Washington think-tanks—of Reagan's doomsday gambit, the Star Wars program. Formulaic at times, and not always geared to an American reader, but still of much interest: excursions that will enhance Amis's reputation as a polished, peripatetic critic—a highly literate observer of the monuments and foibles of our age.
Pub Date: Feb. 9, 1994
ISBN: 0-517-59702-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harmony
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1993
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
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
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