On the evidence of his immense legacy in print, the late novelist Davies was a man of profound artistic appetite; this, the second posthumous collection of his criticism, shares the exuberant and casual erudition of the first (The Merry Heart, 1997). The material here, most of it previously unpublished, was culled by the author’s wife and daughter from his vast archive of speeches, interviews, articles, and errata, including excerpts from the copious diaries he kept throughout his life. Though the majority of pieces deal with the theater, Davies, like George Bernard Shaw, with whom he enjoyed much fruitful contact over the years, cultivated a dynamic relationship to music, and the ruminations on offer here attest to the depth of his engagement. Of Verdi’s Rigoletto and distaste for fine verse that would distract from his music, he provocatively notes that “the inferiority of what he made his librettists produce from the bleeding ruins of Macbeth and Othello is proof of his musical genius, but certainly not of his literary taste,” praising the crudity of its melodrama as essential to the composer’s intent. Elsewhere we encounter subtle observations on the psychology of folk music, the performance style of renowned pianist Benno Moiseiwitsch, for whose daughter the author held a deep affection, even a musical ghost story that Davies wrote for the Young People’s Theatre in Toronto. His remarkably droll humor is on display here, most notably in a letter, from fictional “necromantic suppliers” friars Bacon and Bungay, to Tanya Moiseiwitsch, director of the Stratford Festival Theatre in Davies’s native Canada, offering to sell the eclectic ingredients necessary to perform the famous witches’ scene in Macbeth, part of which was omitted during the festival’s 1962 production of that play. Lovingly collected, these scatterings of Davies’s singular talent are typically abundant and a welcome addition to a corpus like no other in contemporary literature.
Pub Date: July 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88019-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1998
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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