Corrigan’s close reading is welcome, though one hopes that readers will first revisit Fitzgerald’s pages before dipping into...
NPR book critic Corrigan (Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books, 2005) offers an occasionally self-indulgent but mostly spot-on reading of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s greatest novel—and, according to some critics, the greatest novel in American literature.
Those who know The Great Gatsby only through Baz Luhrmann’s recent outing with Leonardo DiCaprio don’t know the book at all, for, among other things, writes Corrigan, Luhrmann had a “larger project, I think, to defang the novel’s class criticism.” A fundamental uneasiness underlies Gatsby: As rich as the title character is, he can never make his way into the much more rarefied world of the Old Rich; as rich as he is, he cannot ward off fate, justice, karma and what Corrigan wisely calls “the Void.” If Corrigan occasionally offers reading-group notes for the cashmere-sweater set—yes, Zelda was a loon; yes, Scott was a bad drunk; yes, Hemingway was an asshole—at other times, she’s right on the case, turning up fascinating and sometimes-controversial gems: Could part of Gatsby’s mystery lie in a mixed-race past? As to the race front, why is it that Fitzgerald has Tom Buchanan reading a book with the title The Rise of the Colored Empires, a book thinly modeled on one that Fitzgerald’s own publisher had just released? There’s much flowing under the surface of Fitzgerald’s novel, and though Corrigan puts too much emphasis on herself and not enough on Jay and company (“I try to breathe deep and accept my powerlessness, as recommended by the on-line daily meditation program I sporadically log onto”), she does a good job of pointing out what we should be paying attention to, which goes far beyond billboards and chandeliers.
Corrigan’s close reading is welcome, though one hopes that readers will first revisit Fitzgerald’s pages before dipping into hers.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-316-23007-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 8, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
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
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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