Farber (On Water, not reviewed), a faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley, is a lithe, spare stylist who deploys his language as “art, shield, music, weapon.” Here he takes concise stock of the miraculous ocean depths, the often sorry histories and the literary associations of certain Pacific outposts: Tonga, the Samoas, Hawaii, among others. The chapters in this short collection read like epigrams—witty, paradoxical riffs over a range of Pacific Ocean subjects, so compressed, the sides of the page appear to bulge outward. The writing is evocative and keen, whether Farber is describing a dive in which hammerheads suddenly swirm above him (he sees himself as an overwhelmed turret gunner: “Bandits at one o’clock, at two, at five, oh sweet Jesus”) or considering the doings of pirates, the tropes and portents of treasure; or covering the “old sins, omissions, ghosts, seeking correction, justice” of Hawaii’s shifting moral ground. Walking Pago Pago’s streets, he experiences “not just a time warp but a time woof. Relativity disproved,” then envisions his pal Richard “making his appearance in court. His appearance. If you could get past his appearance. If he could.” Farber’s uncanny alertness keeps him busy processing what he sees and hears, all the foreignness of place, and in particular his fascination with and addiction to water. He is equally busy finding and unraveling literary connections—the “rich and strange commentary from without”—from Melville, Stevenson, et al., to Cicero and Martial and the Celtic poet Amhairghin, and best of all to indigenous writers, Albert Wendt and Epeli Hau’ofa among them. And Farber keeps the book nimble-footed with a number of amusing asides, such as the response he gets from total strangers to shaving his head. Readers will be left with no doubt that for Farber the ocean is aqua cognita (though he would never be so pretentious), a surf-wet tangle of lover, nemesis, black magic, white magic; then again, he “hope[s] for rideable waves, the sweet deep calm of morning glass.——
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1998
ISBN: 1-56279-112-5
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
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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