plenty to enlighten and satisfy anyone with the remotest interest in writing, editing, or absorbing reading. (Author tour)
A pungent supersized bouquet of letters that—in the apt words of Ross biographer Kunkel (Genius in Disguise, 1994)—brings
the New Yorker’s inimitable founding editor, "loudly, reprovingly alive." Even before he started the magazine in 1925, Ross had led an eventful life as tramp reporter, laborer on the Panama Canal, correspondent on the Leo Frank case, and de facto editor of the military weekly Stars and Stripes. But once he launched the New Yorker, it rapidly consumed his life. Asking his first wife Jane Grant for a divorce, Ross writes, "I am a monstrous person incapable of intimate association." On the evidence here, though, Ross’s true genius (although he dated Ginger Rogers and Beatrice Lillie and married twice more) was for the sorts of relationships that not only nurtured such New Yorker stalwarts as E.B. White, James Thurber, and Peter Arno, but also paternally sheltered them from the interference of philistine publisher Raoul Fleischmann and the advertising department. Ross lays down rules for more effective cartoons, struggles to put contributions on a more predictable schedule, and constantly hectors acquaintances and luminaries from Nunnally Johnson to Ernest Hemingway to write for him. Though he takes time out to bankroll Dave Chasen’s famous Hollywood restaurant and pray that Humphrey Bogart’s baby won’t look like him, he declines to attend a reception for Gertrude Stein: "Nuts to Gertrude Stein. If you want to play backgammon tonight, telephone me." Kunkel unobtrusively identifies only those correspondents and peripheral figures most likely to need introduction, and he supplies headnotes setting the stage for many incidents—though he never does explain whether Ross’s protest over his eviction from his apartment for entertaining overnight guests prevented him from being tossed into the street. Even though Kunkel’s biography and Ben Yagoda’s About Town have skimmed the cream from these letters, there’s still
plenty to enlighten and satisfy anyone with the remotest interest in writing, editing, or absorbing reading. (Author tour)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-50397-8
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Modern Library
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2000
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
