Anderson's writing on the South (where he lived late in his life), much of it obscure or previously unpublished, illuminates the writer more than the region. The selected fiction, essays, memoirs, and journalism, edited by Taylor (English/Univ. of Richmond) and Modlin (English/Virginia Polytechnic Inst.), offer insight into the artistic modus operandi of the author of Winesburg, Ohio and showcase the native Midwesterner's distrust of intellectualism. In ``How I Ran a Small-Town Newspaper,'' Anderson offers a prescription for journalism that represents a fair summation of his fictional technique: ``We . . . have too much the inclination toward what I think of as `big thinking' when what we really want and need is more color, more interest taken in just our own daily lives.'' Anderson practiced a uniquely lighthearted, creative brand of small-town journalism (inventing a fictional staff of reporters, including the famous Buck Fever) while challenging such hallowed southern givens as the purity of white womanhood and the opposition to all things northern. He himself engaged the big issues of the day—industrialization, unionization, and Depression hardship- -infrequently and only so far as they affected the daily lives of workers. The bulk of the material consists of humorous sketches and newspaper and magazine articles that are more impressionistic than objective. Anderson alternately romanticized the South (waxing lyrical about the dignity of poor whites and blacks, the beauty of southern nights) and defended the little folks—mill workers, tobacco farmers, hill people—he thought exploited by big business. Still, his outlook is basically optimistic, his approach evenhanded. As moderator of the famous 1930 debate between John Crowe Ransom (leader of the Agrarian movement) and Stringfellow Barr (a Virginia Quarterly editor who advocated industrialism), Anderson tellingly characterized himself as ``a little worm . . . in the fair apple of progress.'' A notable, if uneven, addition to the Anderson legacy.
Pub Date: Sept. 25, 1997
ISBN: 0-8203-1899-X
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Univ. of Georgia
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1997
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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