Not the how-to book that its title suggests but Fish presents a compelling argument about the necessity of argument.
The acclaimed literary theorist and law professor addresses the concept of argument.
Fish (Cardozo Law School; Think Again: Contrarian Reflections on Life, Culture, Politics, Religion, Law, and Education, 2015, etc.) covers a lot of argumentative territory—political debates, marital spats, courtroom cases, academic analyses—and he is uniquely qualified to provide illumination on all. Fish shows how the arguments omnipresent in each of these arenas may differ—for example, “if you find yourself in an intractable political argument, you may extricate yourself and go home, but it will be the intractable domestic argument that you go home to; it’s always waiting for you.” The metadimension is where the illumination transcends such distinctions and the book’s essence lies: “I am making an argument about argument and its relationship to the human condition,” writes the author. “Basically, argument is the medium we swim in, whether we want to or not.” The points he presents are philosophical, metaphysical, even ontological, because arguments about argument involve inquiry into the nature of truth, the possibility of authority, and the cultural disdain toward words such as “rhetoric” and “spin” that the author considers crucial to these inevitable arguments. The book is not so much about winning arguments as it is about better arguments, ones that elevate the discourse toward a mutual discovery of truth (whatever that is) rather than scoring points toward partisan goals. If we ever were to agree on truth, arguments might cease, or at least decrease, but Fish asserts that this will never happen. “The wish to escape argument is really the wish to escape language,” he writes, “which is really the wish to escape politics and is finally the wish to escape mortality—and it won’t matter a whit.”
Not the how-to book that its title suggests but Fish presents a compelling argument about the necessity of argument.Pub Date: July 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-222665-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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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