A Southeast Asia travelogue that looks for spiritual sustenance but instead finds distraction in spiritual tourism and lengthy quotation. Accompanied by his wife, photographer Lynn Davis, Wurlitzer (Slow Fade, 1984, and author of the screenplay for Bertolucci's film Little Buddha) takes the reader, in maddeningly desultory fashion, to Thailand, Burma (now known as Myanmar), and Cambodia. The motive for the trip is to mourn the accidental death of Davis's 21-year-old son. Wurlitzer desperately wants to convey the course of an inner, rather than an outer, journey—but he fails. Apparently believing that all quotations are equally self- explanatory and useful, he jump-cuts his narrative with anything he comes across: from a Buddhist quote to a newspaper account of a Buddhist monk ``caught having sex with a female corpse in a coffin at a Samut Prakan Temple'' in Bangkok. It takes a while for Wurlitzer to realize that their spiritual journey has been a failure. ``We seem to be locked into movement for its own sake, as if by constantly changing the outside we will in some way encourage a realization within of the truth of impermanence.'' The same, sadly, might be said for the reader, who has had to wade through descriptions of this couple's trek through capitalist Thailand, particularly Patpong (the sex district); a Thai princess's birthday party; a shorthand account of politics in Burma; and visits to many of the famous Buddhist temples, including Cambodia's Angkor Wat. But by the end, the two travelers are physically weakened and not spiritually strengthened. The only thing ``hard'' about this travel might be that they felt they had to undergo it at all. A disjointed pastiche of Buddhist touchstones, Southeast Asian politics and temple lore, and personal expressions of grief. Go elsewhere for all four.
Pub Date: Aug. 5, 1994
ISBN: 1-57062-024-5
Page Count: 142
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1994
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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