An always devoted, sometimes naive fan attains his fondest wish and gets to work for his hero, Sovereign Wit of the Age, Groucho Marx Himself. Here he presents the quotidian details. Stoliar, now a television writer, joined a foundering household as Groucho's secretary and gofer for the last three years of the failing master's life. When he started, he was 19, Groucho was 83. It was a case of a puerile youth and a sad old pantaloon. Always honored by whatever notice the comic paid him, Stoliar took note of every snappy quip the old man could mutter. While much of it is less than significant, devotees will savor the passing references to the great, nearly forgotten songs and tag lines of the Marx canon. Not surprisingly, the author shares the limelight with Groucho, though lots of others appear from the wings chez Marx. There's son Arthur Marx and George Burns, for example. There's Marvin Hamlisch and Mae West, Nat Perrin and Nunnally Johnson, Ryskind and Perelman. There's Dick Cavett (to whom the author toadies a bit and who, it happens, has supplied the introduction to his text). The most singular character, not excepting Groucho, is the notorious Erin Flemming, the mercurial woman who, it was apparent to all who saw her in action, stole Groucho's very soul. Because it deals with a particular period in the life and death of the famous man, the book is, perforce, a unique addition to the Marxist athenaeum. Still, it is two parts a below-stairs, I-was-there, tell-all gossip piece and one part Sunset Boulevard, with Groucho Marx in the Swanson role. The net effect is simply melancholy. If Groucho had had the chance to read this, he'd have surely fired off a nasty, nifty letter, probably on the letterhead of Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel. (b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: March 1, 1996
ISBN: 1-881649-73-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1996
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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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