A fond remembrance of legendary New Yorker editor William Shawn and the changes that brought about his dismissal, by a former staff writer who spent three-and-a-half decades at West 43rd Street. Curiously, as this is part of his autobiographical —Continents of Exile— series, Mehta (Up at Oxford, 1993, etc.) sometimes paints his own story with rather broad strokes. Mehta does an extraordinary job, however, in describing what it was like to work with Mr. Shawn (as he insists on calling him) and his day-to-day editorial process. The opening pages are remarkable in demonstrating Shawn’s ability to guide a writer from an initial idea to its shaping as a New Yorker article. But, as the ever- admiring Mehta sums up, Shawn’s technical ability was the least of it: —What informed and animated his editing were his judgment and wisdom, his thinking and vision.— Shawn had been at the helm since 1952, following the death of founder Harold Ross. Mehta’s recollections of his colleagues are often too scant, and one can sometimes sense the damning of his faint praise, as with Roger Angell. But the usual suspects are on hand: A.J. Liebling, Penelope Gilliatt, Edith Oliver, Joseph Mitchell, Lillian Ross, whose —long affair— with Shawn he mentions only in passing. His narrative thickens as he recounts office intrigues, the early intimations of Shawn’s eventual departure in 1987. He finds —tremors— as far back as the mid-1970s when mandatory retirement was instituted, displacing writers and editors intrinsic to Shawn’s style. He also recounts inner-office power struggles that found Shawn turning in his resignation as early as 1978. It didn—t happen, but it had a profound impact on his final years at the magazine. Too admiring, perhaps—as Mehta himself admits, there were too many —long fact pieces that went unread— and the fiction too often —didn—t go anywhere.— Still, the high level of quality Shawn managed week after week is matchless, and Mehta effectively captures that era.
Pub Date: May 18, 1998
ISBN: 0-87951-876-6
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 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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