Readers expecting an antic appreciation of laughingstocks through the ages will be justifiably disappointed by this wry, selective, and self-absorbed compilation. Steinberg, a reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times, offers seriocomic perspectives on would-be winners consigned to history's dustbin by virtue of their second-best or unavailing efforts to reach their objectives. Cases in point range from the unsung mountaineers who stopped short of Everest's peak through Elisha Gray (whose telephone patent application was filed hours after Alexander Graham Bell's); prodigies who outlived their youthful achievements (Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Orson Welles, Thomas Pynchon, Michael Jackson, et al.); and commercial products that proved to be drugs on the market (butane candles, Corfam shoes, the Edsel, SelectaVision, the smokeless cigarette). Covered as well are impossible dreams like cold fusion and perpetual-motion machines, as well as the 1993 National Spelling Bee, which produced nearly 9 million losers. While combing the Global Village's archives for evidence of ill-fated institutions and individuals, the 34-year-old author gives himself almost equal time. Indeed, Steinberg's consciously rueful accounts of his own life and career amount to a stealth autobiography. In certain instances (e.g., when he recalls climbing the television tower of the Windy City's John Hancock Building on assignment for his newspaper), the personal recollections afford a resonant point of reference for briefings on the hapless ones who could not make it up some slippery slope or other. On balance, unfortunately, the author's inch-deep reflections on his own experiences do precious little to complement, let alone illuminate, discursive takes on the forgotten strivers whose setbacks have helped define success. Droll rather than hilarious, and more elegiac than celebratory: a dispensable example of vaulting ambition that o'erleaps itself. (First serial to Granta; Quality Paperback Book Club selection)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-385-47291-9
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
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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