Layton (Notes From Elsewhere: Travel and Other Matters, 2011) dissects Tahiti’s complex history by examining not only historical accounts, but also the cultural myth these accounts spawned in the Western world.
Beginning with the initial accounts of European navigators’ arrival on Tahiti while searching for Australia and continuing through the island’s colonization to its current political and cultural climate, Layton juxtaposes Tahitian history with its idyllic image, which has long permeated Europe and America. Layton details how Tahiti’s beautiful landscape, abundant produce, and seemingly sexually receptive female population made it a paradise for explorers. It was these initial accounts that formed the basis for this myth, a version that, while immensely popular and appealing, was shaped as much by European ethnocentrism as it was by the actual culture of the island. Layton explains how European accounts may have not only misrepresented the culture of Tahiti, but also brought about an influx of European sailors, missionaries, and merchants whose presence had detrimental results for the people whose way of life they romanticized. Disease, religious turmoil, and slavery devastated the island’s population and culture, leaving lasting effects that modern residents are still contending with. Later chapters examine modern Tahiti, particularly the work of modern Tahitian writers, and show how many are attempting to rectify the stereotypical images the myth instilled by creating more realistic portraits of past and contemporary Tahitian life. Drawing on her background in anthropology, Layton is an informed writer, but she never drifts toward the stuffy. The vast resources used—early explorers’ diaries, contemporary academic analysis, as well as art and literature—offer solid context and support for her thesis.
A layered and fascinating analysis of history and anthropology.
Pub Date: July 23, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4602-6859-9
Page Count: 328
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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