Novelist Dawn Powell is rediscovered in a kindly biography that also recalls the hard- drinking literati of Greenwich Village in the decades surrounding WWII. Powell came to New York City from Ohio in 1918. She left behind a scattered and troubled family who were the core of her most successful novels, including the popular My Home Is Far Away, published in 1944. What set Powell apart from the thousands of other eager and determined young people who invaded Manhattan was a sharp wit and an eye for character that was both humane and unflinching. On her arrival in the city, Powell took a series of rent-paying jobs (including a brief stint in the US Navy as a “Yeomanette”), but her writing began selling almost immediately. She also soon met and married advertising executive Joseph Gousha. Although Joe was an alcoholic and Dawn had frequent, albeit for the most part ephemeral, affairs, the marriage lasted 42 years, until Joe’s death. Their only child, Joseph Jr., called JoJo, was autistic, requiring constant attention, hospitalization, and eventually institutionalization. None of this kept Powell from writing—novels, short stories, articles, poems, and plays. Or plunging virtually nightly into the watering holes of Greenwich Village, where she held her own with contemporaries such as John Dos Passos (a good friend), and Gerald and Sara Murphy. Her novels received uneven reviews and for the most part mediocre sales, although she was regarded by critic Edmund Wilson and later Gore Vidal as one of the distinguished authors of her time. She died in 1965 and was buried in a pauper’s grave. A 1987 article by Vidal, published in the New York Review of Books, revived interest in her work and spurred biographer Page (a Pulitzer- winning music critic for the Washington Post and editor of a volume of Powell’s diaries); reprints of most of her novels are now available. Unconvincing in placing Powell at the forefront of mid-century authors, but gratifying to aficionados of New York City literary mores.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-8050-5068-X
Page Count: 348
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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