An instant replay of the trial of four suburban New Jersey high school athletes who sexually assaulted a retarded girl with a bat and broom. Laufer (Nightmare Abroad: Stories of Americans Imprisoned in Foreign Lands, 1993) quotes long stretches of the court record as he presents the Glen Ridge case in all of its made-for-TV depravity: the pathetically malleable victim, incapable of saying no; the rich, handsome football heroes who conspired to torture her; the sleazy, inept defense attorney who actually argued that ``boys will be boys.'' Laufer knows how to keep the reader riveted to the courtroom drama, although he overdoes the you-are-there verisimilitude (`` `Please bring the jury out,' ordered Judge Cohen''). But the book suffers from his tendency to substitute dead-end moral judgments for legal analysis: The ``Glen Ridge story...is certainly about consent [but] mostly it is about four evil, misguided criminals.'' Interviews with some trial observers and participants yield more subtle insights, but Laufer has a way- -ironic in this context—of merely quoting their sometimes rambling thoughts while confining his own analysis to their physical appearance. For example, he undercuts a NOW organizer's critique of the case with comments about her makeup and jewelry, and he describes a female prosecutor who grants him a post-trial interview as ``periodically pull[ing] on the hem of her long dress as it rides up her leg, exposing her slip.'' One of the most challenging questions of the case—whether the ``Glen Ridge rapists would be serving long prison sentences if they were not rich white kids''— is raised but barely pursued. Best for the brisk editing of a shocking court transcript; otherwise, superficial and melodramatic. Court TV does it better.
Pub Date: May 16, 1994
ISBN: 1-56279-059-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1994
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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