The romance between F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sheilah Graham, as earnestly rendered by her novelist son (Rich Kids, 1992, etc.). In July of 1937, when 40-year-old Fitzgerald headed for his third stint in Hollywood, his novels were for the most part out of print, he was nearly $40,000 in debt, and his wife, Zelda, was institutionalized. Still, he was not drinking; he was filled with determination. At a party of Robert Benchley's, he spotted Sheilah Graham, a former chorus girl from London's East End who was working as a gossip columnist for a newspaper syndicate. She and Fitzgerald started an affair; she was initially nervous because he asked detailed questions about her childhood, and she'd invented aristocratic relatives and falsely described herself as a bored society girl who'd been slumming in the theater. But she finally spilled the truth, describing the poverty that had driven her mother to have her committed to an orphanage and the sexual maneuverings that had accompanied her life onstage. He was tender, drawn by her vulnerability and curious about her character (she became the model for the heroine of The Last Tycoon). Their romance was punctuated by his occasional, cataclysmic tumbles off the wagon. He steered her to great books; she tried to control his drinking. Periodically they would break up; always they would reconcile. He died at her home in December 1940. Despite Westbrook's family ties, it's Grahamthe sex-charged, self-invented womanwho remains two-dimensional. Fitzgerald, on the other hand, mesmerizes as he self-destructs, compelling his lover with his fragility and generosity and trumpeting his pain and frustration via bludgeoning cruelty and extravagant gin binges. What lingers, though, is not the unsynchronized dance of the lovers' mutual demons, but the portraitfamiliar but poignant nonethelessof Hollywood running roughshod over literary talent, and of the grim ravages of alcoholism. (photos, not seen.) (Author tour)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-06-018343-8
Page Count: 512
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
