Those alarmed by the claim (in the title of one recent book) that Star Trek has conquered the world may find this book confirming their fears—or showing just how unlikely they are. Here we have a collection of Star Trek: The Next Generation parodies written in imitation of well-known authors, from literary classics (Melville, Conrad, Joyce) to modern masters (Heller, Salinger, Vonnegut) and today’s bestsellers (King, Rice, Clancy, Collins). Naturally, the list includes Hemingway and Kerouac, two of the most parodied authors of the century; and Dr. Seuss’s fans have not been shortchanged. While the results are inevitably uneven, there is plenty here to amuse both the Trek watcher and the literary reader—two categories that presumably have a degree of overlap. Boyett manages to walk a fine line between broad and subtle; the Melville parody (“Moby Trek”) opens, “Call me irresponsible”; the Anthony Burgess (“A Clockwork Data”) is salted with pseudo-Russian; and the Ayn Rand (“Fandom Shrugged”) renames the starship the Free Enterprise. And where it must have been tempting to settle for obvious laughs, many of these parodies work on multiple levels: “The Ship Also Rises” copies the style and substance of Hemingway works ranging from “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” to Death in the Afternoon, meanwhile poking fun at the frustration of Patrick Stewart’s stage ambitions in his role as Captain Picard, and fitting both elements into a credible Trek plot line. Boyett’s brief introduction takes an appropriately mock-serious look at the meaning of Trek and at its attraction for the famous writers he parodies (some long dead before the show ever aired, but their submissions were too good to exclude just for that reason). Good fun, especially for readers who get both the literary and Trek references.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-06-095276-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Perennial/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
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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