A tribute so pleasant and persuasive that swarming tourists may make it difficult for Fitch and Tulka to find a table.
Two devoted patrons of the celebrated spot that has served coffee and booze to Hemingway, Picasso and numerous other notables display their enduring affection in words and drawings.
Fitch (Appetite for Life: The Biography of Julia Child, 1997, etc.) joins forces with illustrator and editorial cartoonist Tulka to fashion a charming love-letter to their favorite hangout: Café Le Sélect in Paris. The format and text are as unpretentious as a paper napkin, and readers’ responses will range from sighs of nostalgia (aw, they no longer roast their own beans!) to gasps of surprise (poet Hart Crane once started a brawl there) to smiles—maybe even laughs—at the myriad illustrations, many of which consume an entire page. Among the standouts: Hart Crane pictured with a leering sailor in the near background; 18 varieties of French noses; a youthful Bill Murray looking frisky; a well-coiffed Hemingway, writing implement in hand; Isadora Duncan reading a newspaper about the Sacco and Vanzetti case. But this is not just a gallery of celebrities. Tulka also provides full-page drawings of each waiter and many genial caricatures of today’s regulars. Meanwhile, Fitch swiftly sketches Le Sélect’s history. It opened in 1925, is mentioned in The Sun Also Rises, has been run by the same family since 1978. The authors believe the café has endured because of its history, its location (close to the Metro), its determination to avoid commercialization (it sells no T-shirts or refrigerator magnets) and its devotion to service. The owners and employees treat the regulars well, allowing them to sit and sip as long as they want. The authors also offer the history of coffee and cafés, a few of Le Sélect’s top recipes and a description of the its routines and rituals.
A tribute so pleasant and persuasive that swarming tourists may make it difficult for Fitch and Tulka to find a table.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-933368-85-6
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2007
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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