Caustic social history and, undiminished by a sentimental finale, a flamboyant autobiography by a trenchant talent.
Chapman, a Britisher now living in the US, earns big bucks authoring screenplays. Now, as a great-great grandson of Charles Darwin, it’s appropriate that he use his writerly skills to report on current doings in Dayton, Tennessee, scene of the Scopes trial three-quarters of a century ago.
One might expect, on first looking into Chapman’s homage, that his text would be concerned chiefly with the notorious courtroom battle between the dark forces of evolution theory and the effulgent powers of creationist fundamentalism. The drama of the case and the Bryan-Darrow duel are depicted adequately, to be sure, but that’s been done before. Here, though, the trial is merely the hook upon which Chapman hangs his own coming-of-age yarn in a book that’s largely about the evolution of particular Darwinian progeny. It’s the story of Chapman’s parents—his cool, clever father and his alcoholic, promiscuous mother—and it’s also his own story. As any proper nostalgic Englishman must, Chapman describes his schooldays, complete with canings and nasty masters. He includes his vicissitudes as bibulous voyeur and eczema sufferer, as well as his chronic horniness. The result is solipsism run rampant and immoderately readable, particularly when the self-absorbed author takes us through the wilds of East Tennessee with his entertaining tale of an atheist among the Bible-thumpers. He sasses the hicks as if invested with the extravagant arrogance of H.L. Mencken (who was, of course, the premier reporter of the trial); for the bulk of his story, he just can’t suppress his supercilious sneer. And yet there is, ultimately, an unexpected respect for the rednecks, who treat him with puzzled respect and native courtesy. “If I went down an atheist,” he finally writes, “I came back an agnostic”—like Charles Darwin.
Caustic social history and, undiminished by a sentimental finale, a flamboyant autobiography by a trenchant talent.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-28357-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Picador
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2001
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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