Bellow goes to Israel in 1975—not to see the sights, but to talk, listen, and learn—and returns drenched in issues ("the facts are coming out of my ears") and keen on sharing his radar-oven exposure to the crossed wires (Israeli, Arab, Russian, American) that keep the Middle East just this side of all-out conflagration. The journey itself supplies only a feathery structure and relatively little in the way of travelogue commonplaces: a planeful of wildly willful Hasidim, communings with Mount Zion and the Dead Sea ("here you die and mingle"), a wander through the Old City in search of ancient baths. Two poets, a barber, a masseur, and a child violinist offer charming cameos, but politicians and professors are the main attractions; there are intense question-and-answer sessions with Prime Minister Rabin, Abba Eban, Arab moderate Elie Kedourie (a London stop-over), and, inevitably, upon return, a date with Mr. Kissinger. Each acquaintance, occurrence or vista—from a grapevine arbor in the Greek quarter to a Chicago taxicab ride—triggers a free-associative dive into Bellow's vast "personal Israel syllabus": dozens of books, articles, white papers, and remembered interviews. The elegant paraphrases of political arguments slide into personal and literary reflections. Balzac, Baudelaire, Faulkner, Joyce, and Tolstoy hover over Jerusalem. But the real problems aren't muted by the slightly incongruous erudition, the gentle ironies, or the ever-surprising, pleasing phrasing. The West Bank, Russian and French anti-Semitism, valid Palestinian claims, and the all-important future of American Mideast policy; Bellow is overwhelmed—and occasionally rendered naive or tedious—by the seriousness of what you discover "when you leave your desk and enter life." The outing to Jerusalem and back earns him no peace of mind, and responsible readers have tough work ahead if they want to share the expedition's dry rewards.
Pub Date: Oct. 25, 1976
ISBN: 0141180757
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1976
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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