A generous but only sporadically impressive sampling from the noted novelist's occasional non-fiction over the past 20 years: book reviews, magazine articles, eulogies, commencement addresses, and other speeches. Styron's fiction following will be most interested, of course, in his reflections on the genesis of Lie Down in Darkness and Confessions of Nat Turner—along with an introduction that (echoing a few autobiographical pages in Sophie's Choice) bristles over some critics' historical/moral objections to Nat Turner. (In a James Jones eulogy, too, Styron lashes out at critics—"book-review hacks from Kansas City, lustful uptown votaries of Lionel Trilling.") There are brief tributes to Bennett Cerf, Philip Rahv, and Robert Penn Warren, longer ones to Fitzgerald ("the splendid equanimity, the compassion and humor, the love" in his letters) and to Thomas Wolfe—for his influence on a generation of writers, for his "clear glimpses . . . of man as a strange, suffering animal alone beneath the blazing and indifferent stars." Less persuasive are Styron's meditations on the Holocaust (which seem strangely obsessive in their emphasis on the not-just-Jewish nature of German war crimes), his reportage from 1968 Chicago, his quasi-defense of Norman Mailer re the Jack Abbott affair. (Styron, after writing an anti-death-penalty piece for Esquire—reprinted here—became involved in a somewhat similar embarrassment.) And along with sturdily balanced views of military matters in reviews of books on MacArthur and Vietnam, there are a couple of less predictable entries: a Nile travel-piece (brooding over tourism) and a 1961 paean to a camp-cult bio of Errol Flynn's last mistress. Very little that's fully developed or strongly involving, then—but, with a few autobiographical tidbits too (including a charming item about not winning a Rhodes scholarship), this potpourri will only be mildly disappointing for those who admire Styron's tough/sentimental/righteous blend of viewpoints.
Pub Date: Nov. 30, 1982
ISBN: 0099285541
Page Count: 344
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1982
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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