Poet and philanthropy chairman McVay describes, in prose and verse, his eventful life and his meetings with remarkable men, women, and animals.
McVay, a Princeton alum, went from Cold War–era service in 1950s Berlin, where he met his wife, Hella, to a detour into natural science; he stayed after a lecture by animal-communication expert John C. Lilly and asked so many insightful questions that Lilly hired him as an assistant. Thus was McVay exposed to the minds and ways of marine mammals—predominantly dolphins and whales, whose underwater language Lilly spent his career studying. As the eventual head of both the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, McVay mingled with some of the great minds of the 20th century; he describes interactions with, among others, Isaac Asimov, Charles Lindbergh (whom he characterizes as being misinformed about whales), Prince Philip of England, Ralph Nader, Hillary Clinton, primatologist Dian Fossey (and Sigourney Weaver, who portrayed Fossey in the 1988 film Gorillas in the Mist), as well as luminaries of the World Wildlife Fund and the Chautauqua Institution (of which he became president). At one point in this book of reminiscences, the author quotes a character in Lily King’s novel Euphoria, who says that “We’re always, in everything we do in this world, limited by subjectivity,” and he sees it as “a cautionary thought for anyone trying to put together ‘an anecdotal biography.’ ” McVay follows that method here, recounting his eventful life mainly in short, pithy tales of meetings with remarkable people—and animals. He also sprinkles examples of his verse throughout this book, usually attached to a matching anecdote. Overall, this wide-ranging book compensates in passion and spirit what it may lack in cohesion. Conservation causes and eco-initiatives are strongly on the author’s broad mind, for example, as is the relative lack of recognition for modern female poets. He has little time or regard for climate change deniers or the Koch brothers, but he notes when someone makes a choice that benefits the planet.
A whale of a memoir in more ways than one.
Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-941948-01-9
Page Count: 556
Publisher: Wild River Consulting & Publishing, LLC
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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