A dazzling account of America’s most archetypal odyssey, with much social history slyly and wryly inserted.
Rollicking, ironic chronicle of a family car trip from Oregon to New York, interlaced with stories about previous trips, Lewis and Clark, Jack Kerouac, varieties of coffee lids, and . . . well, see the subtitle.
Sullivan, who seems to specialize in quirky, uncategorize-able subjects (Rats, 2004, etc.), takes us on a journey that’s sentimental but also literate, literary, amusing, informative, wicked, self-deprecating and deeply entertaining. Beginning with the observation that the so-called “real America” does not necessarily appear only along the blue highways, he restricts himself (mostly) to the interstates, whose history he relates along the way. He details his preparations (he used AAA TripTiks), the stops he made (he golfed in Montana and examined Geese in Flight, a huge roadside sculpture in North Dakota), the thoughts he had, the interactions with his wife, son and daughter. The text is intentionally and effectively digressive as the author takes myriad detours. One notable example: Sullivan gives us a full account of a previous, horrible cross-country trip in a rented moving van—it misbehaved, then broke down—but he thin-slices the story and inserts pieces of it throughout the narrative. In similar fashion, we also learn about the history of cross-country highways, motels, fast food (Sullivan seems especially interested in the Kum & Go chain), service stations that no longer offer service, the Cannonball Run, the varieties of roadside coffee. We hear about the genesis of guidebooks and how FDR helped design a portion of the Taconic Parkway. We ride along for a bit with Emily Post, who wrote a book about cross-country travel in 1916; we learn that approximately 1.5 million deer are hit by cars each year. Sullivan occasionally offers photocopies of his amusing diary pages and crude but evocative drawings.
A dazzling account of America’s most archetypal odyssey, with much social history slyly and wryly inserted.Pub Date: July 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-58234-527-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2006
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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