The irrepressible Bloch (Psycho, and gobbets of brethren) kicks off his bouncy autobiography by calling it ``unauthorized,'' as if it appeared from apparitional fingers without his permission. Don't believe it: This is pure Bloch—and much better than his recent excelsior-packed novel, Psycho House (1990). Bloch sets out with gusto and never falls into doldrums, which suggests that even at age 77, if given a strong subject, he can summon the same youthful zest that flowed in Weird Stories and Amazing Stories back in the mid-30's, when he first published at age 18. Phony footnotes abound, including: ``This is not a footnote'' and ``Why anyone would want to be known as the author of Psycho is beyond me. For some time I've attempted to persuade the editors of Who's Who to amend my listing as follows: `Robert Bloch is the author of The Iliad, The Odyssey, Romeo and Juliet, and The Complete Works of Isaac Asimov.' '' Bloch, we learn, is a midwesterner of German Jewish parentage who first worked as a pulp writer (his mock-Runyonesque character Lefty Feep, he intimates, introduced a slangy new daffiness to sf and fantasy), then as a greatly admired pulp writer with a fan club, then as an aspiring hack for Milwaukee politicians (he actually got a mayor elected), then as a radio-drama writer. His winning a Hugo for his story ``That Hellbound Train'' and the filming, in midlife, of Psycho boosted his career ever upward. Throughout the memoir, anecdotes abound concerning great writing friends (Arthur C. Clarke; August Derleth; H.P. Lovecraft, whose correspondence with the youthful Bloch set Bloch on his writing career) and actor folk (from Karloff to Joan Crawford): Alfred Hitchcock, Bloch tells us, forever said that Bloch was responsible for everything in the film version of Psycho, including the last famous line, ``I wouldn't hurt a fly.'' Brilliant, loopy, Blochian, and a towering example of modest self-deprecation and lampoonery on a Lilliputian scale. Seriously.
Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-312-85373-4
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 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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