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CATFISH AND THE DELTA

CONFEDERATE FISH FARMING IN THE MISSISSIPPI DELTA

One hundred thousand acres of the fertile land of the Mississippi Delta are under ponds; where cotton was king for more than century, the channel catfish now rules. As with cotton, the money involved is big-time. Schweid (Hot Peppers, 1980), who has lived in the Delta, describes Belzoni (``THE CATFISH CAPITAL OF THE WORLD'') and its unofficial catfish capitol building, the Pig Stand—a barbecue pit at the side of Highway 49. There, the handful of farmers in baseball caps and work clothes, exchanging gossip over cups of coffee, have a collective worth in the tens of millions. Catfish farming requires big outlays, Schweid tells us, and although there is no more sharecropping (as with cotton), it brings its own host of unskilled jobs filled by blacks. Those who once chopped cotton now net the catfish from the ponds, scooping fish eggs out of underwater hatcheries (trying to keep their hands away from angry males brooding on their nests) and cleaning fish in plants. Meanwhile, there is some hope: Ed Scott, Jr., owns Pond Fresh Catfish, making him the only black owner of a catfish processing plant in the US: ``I said to my son, `I'm not gonna let them stop me. Let's go on down to Indianola, go through one of those plants and see what it is they're doing that we can't do.' '' Deltans, Schweid explains, love good times: the World Catfish Festival in April; the annual Catfish Races (there are bleachers and an announcer); and B.B. King Day in Indianola. King, who left his hometown a tractor-driver and returned a world-famous musician, plays a show in the city park for his old neighbors. A most interesting tour of an old and unique American enclave—fecund, unchanged, and inward-looking.

Pub Date: March 15, 1992

ISBN: 0-89815-455-3

Page Count: 192

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1992

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I AM OZZY

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

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THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

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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