Subjective, albeit detached (even alienated), reflections from a gaijin who returned to Japan as much in search of himself as the soul of his host country. A British barrister who had traveled through and written about war-torn Afghanistan, Hodson (Under a Sickle Moon, 1987) was seconded as a securities trader to the Tokyo branch of the London- based bank for which he had worked a couple of years back. While in Japan, the vaguely discontented, thirtysomething author (who had visited Japan as a youth in pursuit of enlightenment) kept a journal, which he draws on here to offer allusive and episodic impressions of his not-altogether-happy stay. Although fluent in Japanese, for example, Hodson experienced great difficulty communicating in a self-absorbed, status-conscious society where urban materialism had all but vanquished traditional values. After constant contact with Japanese colleagues and European friends, in fact, he concluded that money is ``the one-word language everyone understands.'' Notwithstanding cultural and spiritual shocks, Hodson (who seems to have led a notably active night life during his 12-month sojourn) provides vivid examples of the joyless hedonism, sexual license, violence, and other of affluence's less appealing excesses that have undermined the consensual harmony if not moral fiber of an economic superpower. For a variety of reasons (a lost love, office politics, a new flame, existential angst), the author eventually decided to return home, thereby completing his ``circle round the sun.'' Though Hodson largely lets his observations speak for themselves, he occasionally lapses into fortune-cookie wisdom: ``In the yoga of the direct path, one life is enough. But it depends on the trajectory.'' That cavil apart: a different and rewarding appreciation of modern Japan.
Pub Date: April 30, 1993
ISBN: 0-679-42102-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1993
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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