As Burroughs-iana, marginal. As satire, flat. As agitprop, clumsy and outdated.
A surrealistic action plan for would-be revolutionaries from the literary provocateur, prescribing a dash of viral marketing and a lot of political assassination.
Written and recorded in multiple forms in the early 1970s, this manifesto is an impassioned yet sometimes incoherent rebuke to ossified political ideologies, much as Burroughs’ fiction assailed literary conventions and even the countercultural ideals of the Beats he associated with. As a guide to “bring down the economic system of the West,” its recommendations are, effectively, terrorism: targeted and random assassinations, plane bombings, mobilized street gangs, and so on. Not all of the recommendations are violent, though, and some anticipate modern-day political meme strategies: “Construct fake news broadcasts on video camera,” he writes. “Scramble your fabricated news in with actual news broadcasts.” Some passages are marked by a righteously outraged humor, as when he imagines the masses rising up against the British monarchy and profanely chanting “bugger the queen.” That tonal shifting—sometimes funny, sometimes angry, sometimes coolly how-to-ish, as the title suggests—makes it unclear how seriously Burroughs took his call to arms. (He calls his mass-assassination plan a “utopian fantasy,” but he still contemplates it in detail.) Three academic essays introducing the book shed surprisingly little light on the matter, fussing over discrepancies between versions of the text, though a lively afterword by alternative publisher V. Vale argues that Burroughs was theorizing more than exhorting, chasing “outrageous scenarios and fresh language capable of inspiring readers decades into the future.” But even if Burroughs was indeed recommending mass killings, few would find much inspiration in this book’s slurry of ideologies, half-remembered history, and pseudoscience, as the author draws on crackpot Scientology doctrine and inexplicably suggests that we “produce a variety of humanoid sub-species.”
As Burroughs-iana, marginal. As satire, flat. As agitprop, clumsy and outdated.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8142-5489-9
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Ohio State Univ. Press
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
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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