Nonetheless, a much-deserved tribute to Gordimer and a firm reminder of her country’s difficult path to liberation.
A massive collection of nonfiction by the South African Nobel Prize winner and longtime critic of apartheid.
This omnibus of essays by Gordimer (Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black, 2007, etc.) runs chronologically. Though it’s only intermittently autobiographical, it begins with her early years: In “A South African Childhood,” she describes growing up in comfort but never far from the mining industry that introduced her to her homeland’s institutionalized racism. Gordimer addresses apartheid from several angles: as a literary critic, considering the works of black authors who were routinely banned by the state; as a dissident, protesting the racist policies that prompted jailings, violence and uprootings of communities; and as a keen social observer who took note of the intimate bonds that connected blacks and whites when they could meet away from the authorities’ eyes. Her tone on the subject is stern, chastising, mournful, mocking and, once apartheid began to collapse in 1990, jubilant. But what consistently defines her prose is a fierce commitment to addressing the subject openly and in plain speech. Even after the end of apartheid she wrote thoughtfully on the steps that both blacks and whites needed to take to achieve social parity. Telling Times also includes Gordimer’s essays on other topics, mainly literature and philosophy. She had a youthful affinity for French existentialists, and there are numerous close readings of fiction writers from South Africa (J.M. Coetzee, William Plomer), the Middle East and the United States. Away from political or literary concerns, though, the author has a more difficult time finding her footing. Her travel pieces on the Congo, Botswana and Madagascar are meandering and surprisingly unevocative for a writer who has imagined Africa so powerfully in her fiction. Though her political commitment persists, there’s less force in her later work, mostly briefer articles of the op-ed and keynote-speech variety.
Nonetheless, a much-deserved tribute to Gordimer and a firm reminder of her country’s difficult path to liberation.Pub Date: June 28, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-393-06628-9
Page Count: 800
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2010
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
