Norman Mailer has evolved a theory that an author must create a public personality for himself in order to sell books, and in accordance with this theory he here publishes everything he has ever written, each piece accompanied with a long and frequently fascinating introduction concerning how the work was written, what he thought about it when he wrote it, and how he thinks about it now. The material includes five excellent early short stories, his columns for the Village Voice, his now famous essay The White Negro, a couple of other (and much better essays) on David Riesman and Western Defense, a pair of passages from his forthcoming novel, as yet untitled but than which nothing more clinical has been seen since Edmund Wilson's notorious Princess with the Golden Hair. Mr. Mailer also includes a lot of opinions of his peers in the field of literature which are back-breakingly honest and also pretty shrewd. Mr. Mailer is by far the most articulate (literarily speaking) exponent of the way of life he prefers to call Hip (rather than Beat), and it is therefore the more unfortunate that another of his theories requires him to use Anglo- Saxon monosyllables on principle, because his Advertisements is practically certain to be banned in many localities, and possibly nationally. There is a good deal of nonsense in this, much very strong meat, and a lot that stands up well in spite of the framework. This is sure to be some kind of success de scandal, but the bullheaded integrity behind the undertaking compels a certain respect.
Pub Date: Nov. 6, 1959
ISBN: 0674005902
Page Count: 540
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1959
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
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