A selection from the ardently, offhandedly composed criticism of, in editor Leithauser’s words, “an informal, brazen, unfootnoted diamond-in-the-rough.” At the height of Jarrell’s critical output, Berryman called him “the most powerful reviewer of poetry active in this country,” an ironic compliment for a prolific poet whose essay collections are now mostly out of print or unavailable. From Poetry and the Age (1953), A Sad Heart at the Supermarket (1962), The Third Book of Criticism (1969), and Kipling, Auden & Co. (1980), poet and novelist Leithauser (Friends of Freeland, 1997, etc.) has assembled a representative sample of Jarrell’s work on Willliam Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, Robert Graves, W.H. Auden, and others; his views on reading and criticism; and his cultural commentaries. In his excellent pieces on Frost, Whitman, and Housman, Jarrell immediately distinguishes himself from coeval New Critics with his unfiltered sense of a poem’s mood and affect as revealed in its language, rather than in the epistemological ambiguities of its diction. In addition to the longer pieces, Leithauser has assembled “A Jarrell Gallery” culled from other sources. These brief excerpts, each a paragraph at the most, evidence his keen pleasure in good poetry and his feared invective against bad (e.g., “If [Stephen Spender] were as soft and sincere and sentimental as most of his poems make him out to be, the rabbits would have eaten him for lettuce, long ago”). Jarrell’s writings on 1950s mass culture in “The Rest of It,” however, often display a time-capsule mustiness in their complaints about Reader’s Digest culture and all-American conformity. Still, Jarrell’s clear-eyed view of his times has a glint of prescient clarity, as when he decries the academic professionalization of criticism and its ascendency over the works examined in “The Age of Criticism.” In these well-chosen essays’ unsparing generosity—and disparagement—Jarrell, unlike most critics, vividly conveys his enthusiasm for and occasional disappointment with contemporary poetry.
Pub Date: June 13, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-118012-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1999
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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