A vigorous, finely balanced reporting job on the late Robert Joffrey and his ever-popular dance company. Anawalt, a California dance critic, is an unabashed fan of Joffrey's, yet this volume is no encomium. Instead, her briskly written account of the company from its mythically modest beginnings in 1954 to Joffrey's death from AIDS in 1988 at the age of 59 collects and interprets suggestive facts at nearly every turn. Joffrey's obsession with ballet emerged early: He staged his first ballets when he was a child in Seattle, with costumes borrowed from a neighborhood dry cleaner. When he eventually launched his own company, it was a seat-of-the-pants affair: The fledgling group's no-frills tours of the US were made in a red and white station wagon, driven in breakneck fashion by a roguish stage manager; to save time and money after typical one-night-stand performances, the dancers washed their ballet duds ``by standing in the hotel showers with the tutus and tights still on, throwing laundry detergent over themselves, and then drying the smaller pieces out the next day on the car's interior door handles.'' In addition to her rich store of anecdotes, Anawalt is equally forthcoming in characterizing each stage of the company's struggle to survive and the artistic hallmarks of the evolving Joffrey style (``Learn the classical technique—then forget it,'' Joffrey advised) and mindfully eclectic repertory (Gerald Arpino, Joffrey's frequent collaborator and longtime companion, was successful because he ``made ballets for people who hate ballet,'' she succinctly notes). Unusual among dance critics, she never hides behind a professional dance vocabulary. She also ventures worthwhile observations on contextual issues, such as the uncomfortable coupling of dance with business in this country and the politics of American arts funding. An intelligent, fair, fascinating portrait of a seminal figure in American ballet. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-684-19724-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1996
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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