Philosopher, art critic, novelist, and co-editor of the EncyclopÇdie (the ``bible'' of the Enlightenment), Diderot enjoyed a reputation for wit, wisdom, and intellectual generosity—which is sustained in this admiring critical biography. But, as in his E.M. Forster (1978), Furbank sees his subject's ``dark'' side as well, obliquely revealed in Diderot's fiction. Aside from an early marriage to an unsuitable and shrewish wife, a liaison with a longtime mistress, and a relationship with his daughter AngÇlique, Diderot subordinated his personal life to his public life as a man of letters. But there are hidden emotional conflicts and mysteries suggested in Furbank's readings of Rameau's Nephew, The Nun, and Jacques the Fatalist. Furbank carefully traces the origins of Diderot's eclectic philosophy in Lucretius, Locke, Shaftesbury, and Hume; his many literary associations and quarrels (especially with Rousseau); his finances; his role in the pamphlet ``war'' over the relative merits of French and Italian music; his ``invention'' of art criticism; and his impact on European culture, especially on Lessing, Goethe, Zola, and August Comte, who, like many, considered Diderot the ``greatest man'' of the 18th century. While Diderot's dogmatic and impractical ideas on government alienated Catherine the Great, who thought he needed a ``keeper,'' Diderot was considered dangerous in France, where ideas were taken seriously enough for society women to hold salons for intellectual exchange and for philosophers to be imprisoned or exiled. It is that sense of the centrality of intellectual life that Furbank conveys, while intimating another nature—repressed, passionate, even bestial—hidden in Diderot's novels, short stories, and dramas, on which the biographer comments at length. Polite and respectful, with some fashionable allusions to Roland Barthes and M.M. Bakhtin. (Eight pages of photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 6, 1992
ISBN: 0-679-41421-5
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1992
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
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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