An uneven collection of tributes to Wallace Stegner— meticulous novelist, historian, chronicler of the American West, wilderness advocate—edited by his son, Page (Outposts of Eden, 1989, etc.), and wife, Mary. Stegner's writings have appealed to a wide audience, garnering O. Henry and Pulitzer and National Book awards (he accepted), and the National Medal for the Arts from the NEA (he declined, believing the NEA had been politicized by the Reagan administration). Edward Abbey, never one to lavish praise, once declared Stegner ``the only living American worthy of the Nobel.'' And when Stegner died from injuries sustained in an auto accident, at 83, the outpouring of grief was a measure of the man. Gathered here are remembrances written hard on the occasion of his death, celebrating his novels full of natural light, his years as a teacher, his gentle patriarchal presence at Breadloaf, his superlative ``Wilderness Letter'' (wherein wilderness is the geography of hope). A few leaden items in this volume simply outline their subject's passage (some editorial pruning was in order, as well: Readers are informed all too often that Stegner was born in Iowa in 1909), including T.H. Watkin's indulgent, spuriously intimate ``Letter to Mary.'' The anecdotal encounters shine: After a slow drive with Stegner through a Utah landscape, Terry Tempest Williams says, ``Thank you so much for coming.'' ``Thank you for staying,'' he returns. John Daniels, then a self-conscious poet living in a cabin on Stegner's property, hears on one of his strolls ``a rainlike patter'' coming from the Stegner porch, only to find Stegner urinating over the rail of his deck. ``Welcome to the country,'' he said with a grin. ``We're not very formal.'' More than a few of the uninitiated, and doubtless the old guard as well, will be reaching for one of Stegner's 30-odd books after reading these collected appreciations.
Pub Date: June 27, 1996
ISBN: 0-87156-883-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1996
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
© 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.
