Taut, timely pieces by a writer who sees the cosmic in the quotidian.
Croatian novelist/essayist Ugresic (The Ministry of Pain, 2006, etc.), now a resident of Amsterdam, offers discerning, sometimes grumpy commentary on a rapidly changing Europe—and a rapidly changing world.
The author admits that she “bickers” throughout this collection composed largely of previously published newspaper columns—and so she does. She rails against the globalization of sex slavery and notes wryly that a former Yugoslav prison for political enemies is now a favorite setting for gay-porn films. She marvels at the vapidity of popular culture: Britney Spears et al., do not come off well; those who care about them come off worse. She chides the Catholic Church for its corruption and wonders, in an essay that begins with the provocative image of Vladimir Putin kissing a fish, at the human yearning for the limelight. She comments continually about the dislocation of people. More than 200,000 Poles populate Ireland; people from the Balkans have scattered everywhere; Amsterdam swells with immigrants from the Middle East. Ugresic finds the flea market a perfect metaphor for a world whose borders are evanescing, and she cites the now-ubiquitous Vietnamese nail salons as evidence of global population shifts. Everywhere, she notes, current residents complain about the influx. The author sprinkles her text with literary allusions, as well. Surprised that a ten-year-old acquaintance has never heard of Anne Frank, she promptly takes him to the family’s hiding place in Amsterdam—but notes that many Dutch were eager to turn in Jews for cash. In a very fine essay she explores that recent publishing phenomenon, the memoir, calling it “a kind of literary karaoke.” She describes, too, the odd nostalgia that many feel for old communist Europe.
Taut, timely pieces by a writer who sees the cosmic in the quotidian.Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-934824-00-9
Page Count: 298
Publisher: Open Letter
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2008
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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