I read MINNA VON BARNHELM in the translation by Kenneth J. Northcott, published in 1972 by the University of Chicago Press. Northcott, in his introducI read MINNA VON BARNHELM in the translation by Kenneth J. Northcott, published in 1972 by the University of Chicago Press. Northcott, in his introduction, stresses that the text has not been cut. The playwright Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's intellect and style are well represented, I think. (I don't read German. English is my only language.) By the way, this is part of a series Northcott edited called GERMAN LITERARY CLASSICS IN TRANSLATION. I mention all this because Goodreads readers may obtain different editions. I can't imagine any English-language version can top this one. The introduction makes clear that Lessing was a theorist of the drama. Like Goethe, he wrote about writing. Reading the play itself, I was reminded of such English playwrights as Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Oliver Goldsmith. I thought of the drawings of Hogarth. In the hands of very focused actors and directors, MINNA VON BARNHELM probably evokes belly laughs from an audience. There is a scene in which someone is telling a lady about what happened to each of an old friend's servants, and we get a pretty detailed, if light-hearted, realistic description of people fleeing the ruins war has made of their territory. While this is a comedy, it's about the aftermath of the Seven Years War. I was expecting something crude, though, my tastes running in that direction, but I was pleasantly surprised to find a rather uplifting entertainment. I would not say it is shallow, though. I think there's room to say that Ephraim thinks warfare ought not to be a way of life; but I don't think he condemns the practice. He wants people to behave decently while rampaging through the world. Have a look at Rodgers and Hart's BABES IN ARMS. The audience is supposed to love the idea of young people joining the army as soon as they outgrow the malt shop. I give Lessing some slack. I wonder how often this play has been performed in the United States? I searched Youtube and found quite a few performances filmed in Germany. Off-Off-Broadway would be just right for this. The Pearl Rep, which I used to visit in the eighties and nineties, used to do a lot of eighteenth-century comedies. I think if a reader pictures Madeline Kahn and Teri Garr as the female leads, he'll get an idea of how this play should be done. Gene Wilder would have been good as one of the males. So, yes: Mel Brooks would have been the right guy to stage MINNA VON BARNHELM.
Brevity is the soul of wit, so let me steal wit’s soul a minute to say THE LONG GOODBYE may be the best weird book I’ve ever read. Post atomic ChandleBrevity is the soul of wit, so let me steal wit’s soul a minute to say THE LONG GOODBYE may be the best weird book I’ve ever read. Post atomic Chandler is bizarre. Marlowe (his protagonist) even has TV. He leaves it on even when it’s just static. In ways, this book reads like a satire from 1967. But he was dead eight years by then. It should be a terrible book. It’s part thriller, part bickering-couples story a la John O’Hara, part substance abuse memoir, and part societal indictment. People suddenly make speeches analyzing the corruption of the age. But these are not only entertaining, they are deep. Chandler was a stylist. Stylistically, this book never fails. It is a three-hundred-seventy-nine page trigger warning. At the same time, it’s about a man who wants a better world. Do you?...more
I saw this movie about ten years ago and read the screenplay (in the Faber and Faber edition which coincided with the movie’s release in 1998) a couplI saw this movie about ten years ago and read the screenplay (in the Faber and Faber edition which coincided with the movie’s release in 1998) a couple of days ago. I would say the screenplay conveys the action pretty well, and some of the lines hit a little harder because the reader can laugh out loud without missing anything. Not that it conveys the pizazz of the movie. The screenplay, is, of course, written in service of the movie. The book is accompanied by stills; not many, but not too few. These are strategically placed, helping the reader to picture the movie. Three pages of comedic prefatory remarks appear at the start of the book. These are written for the book by one or both Coen brothers. ...more
I read this over a period of three days. Three days is slightly less than the number of days over which the story takes place. One of Raymond ChandlerI read this over a period of three days. Three days is slightly less than the number of days over which the story takes place. One of Raymond Chandler’s merits is his avoidance of repetitive wording. This sometimes works against him, because the search for an original phrase slows the book down. He models himself on Dashiell Hammett, but Hammett got to the point faster. But Chandler’s presentation of his first-person narrator’s thoughts is compelling. Philip Marlowe is a man of depth. ...more
I’ll make a few observations. THE SIRENS OF TITAN was published in 1959. Dwight Eisenhower was reaching the end of his second term. Vonnegut was thirtI’ll make a few observations. THE SIRENS OF TITAN was published in 1959. Dwight Eisenhower was reaching the end of his second term. Vonnegut was thirty-seven years old. This was his second novel. He’d written a fair number of stories and was one of many World War Two vets who’d fallen in love with Science Fiction. Science Fiction in that era was humanistic. One has only to read Ray Bradbury’s THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES to get a notion of what readers of the Sci-Fi genre looked for as they approached middle age: Fairly poetic, somewhat escapist, rather idealistic stories about men sent on missions by remote governments reminiscent of Eisenhower’s. Kurt Vonnegut, getting more or less nowhere with his writing, began to heap satire on his paragraphs. THE SIRENS OF TITAN is a weirdly peaceful scaffolding for the satiric observations of a man who’d fought on the winning side of an existential war, who had been taken prisoner by the side which would lose, and who, while a Prisoner Of War, had to help his fellow prisoners clean up the ruins of a city the winning side leveled to the ground. This novel is a farewell to the form Vonnegut mastered, and an embrace of the comic irony he would promulgate the rest of his life....more
Vonnegut in 1961. CAT’S CRADLE would be published two years later. With MOTHER NIGHT, we have his sardonic outlook, but we don’t quite yet have that wVonnegut in 1961. CAT’S CRADLE would be published two years later. With MOTHER NIGHT, we have his sardonic outlook, but we don’t quite yet have that weirdly ecstatic mood he was soon to tap into. MOTHER NIGHT is aimed squarely at a readership of war veterans hitting middle-age. It is grim, lyrical and tough. It’s Goethe filtered through Erich Maria Remarque. (Wordplay Vonnegut might have approved: This book seems to have been written by Erich Maria Remarque Twain.) One can see that Kurt Vonnegut was steeped in German literature. I assume he knew German. That he was captured by the Nazis in World War Two seems almost ironic: He was acutely aware that in his hometown of Indiana, Germanic culture became virtually taboo in the First World War. He was of German descent. As an American POW in the city of Dresden, he witnessed the terror bombings the Allies inflicted on that city. He discusses that in an introduction to the 1966 reprint of MOTHER NIGHT. His experience in Dresden would be the basis of his most celebrated novel, SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE. I think MOTHER NIGHT should be compares to another novel by an American of Vonnegut’s generation, GRAVITY’S RAINBOW. While Thomas Pynchon’s novel is famous for impenetrability, it is like MOTHER NIGHT in being a study of the German psyche. Obviously, the US was on the winning side in World War Two. The victors had a close look at the enemy. Vonnegut seems to have felt he was looking in a mirror. MOTHER NIGHT is fiction, of course, but it is informed by the sobering, harrowing experience of a war to end civilization....more
I was not prepared for this. That was the complete text of my review for a few hours, but I’ll make some observations about PLAY IT AS IT LAYS: It is moI was not prepared for this. That was the complete text of my review for a few hours, but I’ll make some observations about PLAY IT AS IT LAYS: It is modernist. The narration is not linear. For the first quarter of it the reader will puzzle out who is who, where things are and when any given section is happening. But for the rest of the book, until the last ten pages or so, the story is clear. This is not to say its atmosphere of nightmare evaporates. I’ll compare the manner of the telling to that used by Ford Maddox Ford in THE GOOD SOLDIER. Though new to Didion, it being I’ve only recently read THE WHITE ALBUM, and none of her other books, I was surprised to see that one of the most celebrated essayists had, early in her career, written a novel of such technical virtuosity and emotional impact. It was written in 1970, not long before the Roe v Wade decision. It may as well have been a hundred years ago. Or 2024. As with much American fiction of the mid-twentieth century, an illegal abortion informs the events of PLAY IT AS IT LAYS. (Other such books are THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH, by Saul Bellow and REVOLUTIONARY ROAD, by Richard Yates. Eugene O’Neill’s play STRANGE INTERLUDE also deals with it.) Readers will find many passages in this book profoundly uncomfortable....more
It's ironic that STAR WARS, which combined Wagner and Joseph Campbell and gave us the fascist society every bullied nerd secretly wishes for, should hIt's ironic that STAR WARS, which combined Wagner and Joseph Campbell and gave us the fascist society every bullied nerd secretly wishes for, should have put one of the funniest people of the late 20th-Century front and center. Carrie Fisher realized that sharp wit was worth bringing forth. She was one of the most quotable celebrities and it was clear, in 1976, that she was someone of independent thought. In the late 1980s, she began writing wildly popular, hilarious books. She was a humorist par excellence. There are few humorists whose gift for inducing laughter isn't informed by a schooling in pain. By the time WISHFUL DRINKING was published, the pain the dominant element in her writing. It's a funny book, based on her one woman show from 2006, but there is something rote about its presentation. It's as if she's pulling rabbits out of a hat; a sense that she wants the task of telling her story to end is obvious. Carrie Fisher is beloved, and she seems to have been a forgiving woman. She was damn funny. The merit of this book is that, despite the fact that she is tired, she offers hope to people who have lived in psychological pain....more
I wasn't sure how I was going to start this review until I noticed, on the copyright page, something that probably will not be found in later editionsI wasn't sure how I was going to start this review until I noticed, on the copyright page, something that probably will not be found in later editions of this book: "Most of these pieces appeared, in various forms and at various times, in the following magazines, and I would like to thank the editors of each: ESQUIRE, THE SATURDAY EVENING POST, LIFE (more specifically, the 'old' SATURDAY EVENING POST and the 'old' LIFE), TRAVEL & LEISURE, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK REVIEW, NEW WEST, and THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS." just below this are the initials J.D. My library has a first edition. Because this was on the copyright page, I am ninety per cent certain that little moment, tailored by Joan Didion herself, doesn't appear in reprints of THE WHITE ALBUM or in collections which include it. I never think of the writer having anything to do with the phrasing of a a copyright page until the mid-nineties. Dave Eggers' A HEARTBREAKING WORK OF STAGGERING GENIUS, which came out in 2000, has a copyright page filled with parenthetical asides as detailed as David Foster Wallace's footnotes. But Joan Didion, in 1979, thought to entertain the sort of reader who bothers looking at the copyright information, and demonstrated that brevity is the soul of wit. Someone who doesn't bother to look at the copyright page will not notice anything unusual. (Eggers' copyright page is in minuscule font; Didion's digression is camouflaged by the fact it is in the same font as the rest of the page.) Anyway, this is evidence of Didion's sense of humor. The essays in THE WHITE ALBUM are not comic and I would not say they are ironic, but there is an attitude of amusement. After I finished the book, just about an hour ago, I read an attack on it written in 2015. The author of that attack had a notion of Didion as an impossibly arrogant creature. What I sense, reading THE WHITE ALBUM, is that Didion viewed institutions as absurd, whether functioning well or not. In essays which seem about to go into great detail about reservoirs, cemeteries, or traffic light switchboards, Didion shows a great capacity for research and an instinct for getting to the point. Most of these essays are about life in California in the sixties and seventies. This is not merely because that's when they were written. There is a retrospective tone throughout. Many of the essays have a date at the end showing that the essay was based on notes Didion had been making for years. She writes about opportunism in an unmoored society. The title essay, of course, is about the Manson murders. I give Didion props for neither mentioning the Beatles or Manson's obsession with the double-album the Beatles issued in 1968. She knows we know....more
THE FRIDAY AFTERNOON CLUB, subtitled “A Family Memoir,” is Griffin Dunne’s account of his life up until the birth of his daughter Hannah. Dunne was abTHE FRIDAY AFTERNOON CLUB, subtitled “A Family Memoir,” is Griffin Dunne’s account of his life up until the birth of his daughter Hannah. Dunne was about thirty-four then. He’s sixty-eight now. The book was published about a month ago. (It’s the first day of summer, 2024, as this review is being written, and THE FRIDAY AFTERNOON CLUB is perfect summer reading.) Most celebrity memoirs rely on the reader’s recognition of the names mentioned. Most readers of this book will have sought it because it is filled with glamorous luminaries. The readers who finish it will finish it quickly, even though it is not incredibly short. A believability informs the narrative; and the portrait of Griffin Dunne’s father is profound. This book also deals with a family’s efforts to seek justice for their murdered loved one. Their attendance at the trial of her killer was considered unusual in the early 1980s. Dunne’s prominent family drew attention to the urgency of legal reform. Toxic masculinity is discussed in many forums today. In 1982 it wasn’t on the national radar. Dunne’s father Dominick wrote about the trial for VANITY FAIR; Griffin Dunne gives us a wider picture of the family’s experience. Dunne is at times funny, sometimes enraged, but almost always perceptive. He tells us things which few writers could make amusing; for example, a cat the family had would deposit the heads of dead rats on the floor, and the Dunne children used them as finger puppets. When I first became aware of Griffin Dunne, it was through the film AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON. I thought “This is a good, comedic actor.” I felt the same way when I saw his performance in Martin Scorsese’s AFTER HOURS. This personality is apparent throughout THE FRIDAY AFTERNOON CLUB. It is engaging and thoughtful....more
The edition I read was published in 1987. I have a feeling the book has since been augmented. This copy was on the shelf at my public library. This is The edition I read was published in 1987. I have a feeling the book has since been augmented. This copy was on the shelf at my public library. This is a collection of essays, by various authors, about William Shakespeare’s OTHELLO. Harold Bloom edited it and provides an introduction. The one essay a general reader would enjoy was written by Anthony Hecht. The other essays make interesting points, but the writing is turgid. (Bloom’s introduction is clear.) There are a million books about Shakespeare which are designed to please a thoughtful reader. A thoughtful reader - and I venture to say I fit the category - may understand these essays. I will say I understood parts of most of these essays. Two or three, though, I found impenetrable. I read it because it struck me recently that OTHELLO, which I first saw on stage during the Carter administration, mirrors our world with increasing frequency. Iago would fit into the power structure snugly....more
PORTRAIT OF JENNIE was written in 1939. A novella, it lies somewhere between the fantasy genre and a spiritual meditation. The style, brief, to the poPORTRAIT OF JENNIE was written in 1939. A novella, it lies somewhere between the fantasy genre and a spiritual meditation. The style, brief, to the point and a little dreamlike, is a reminder of the high prose standards of its day. I especially admire the fact that Robert Nathan lets the reader know that two storms are brewing: The historic hurricane of 1938, which ravaged the Eastern seaboard of the United States, and the Second World War, which began in September, 1939. In a scene which I imagine the famous movie adaptation from 1948 did not detail, the protagonist's friend discusses how Judaism informs his outlook. Kristallnacht occurred a year before PORTRAIT OF JENNIE was published. If Jennie is elusive, she is not absent. This book encourages the reader to be vigilant....more
I finished SHOW BOAT about five minutes ago. I'll add more to my review another time, but I'll say this novel, first published in 1926, is essentiallyI finished SHOW BOAT about five minutes ago. I'll add more to my review another time, but I'll say this novel, first published in 1926, is essentially the story of three generations, mostly as seen through the eyes of a representative of the middle generation. It takes place from the 1880's through the mid-1920s. The main scenes of action take place along the Mississippi River and Chicago, with slight detours to Massachusetts and New York City. SHOW BOAT is the story of the owners of the boat and the troupe of actors on it. Edna Ferber began her career of sprawling narrative fiction with this book. [Fred’s note: I’m wrong. This is her fifth of twelve novels. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1924 for SO BIG.] She researched what she wrote about but also had a firm grasp of the psychology of her characters. If she never quite shakes the effect of journalism, she never loses her sense of irony....more
AMERICA FANTASTICA makes serious points through a comic filter. It is a story of the road. The writing is clear. It is not a work of realism. There isAMERICA FANTASTICA makes serious points through a comic filter. It is a story of the road. The writing is clear. It is not a work of realism. There is a passing reference to Walt Disney's FANTASIA at one point, and I notice "fantastica" sounds a lot like "fantasia." The characters behave anachronistically. This is deliberate. The people in AMERICA FANTASTICA are not adapting well to the digital age. They use paper maps to find places, only using their cell phones as a supplement to the analog maps they find at gas stations. There are brief sections in which the third person narrator tells us of the national penchant for lying. It takes place in the near past, 2019, but the descriptions of mass mendacity are themselves untruthful, with some actual occurrences scattered throughout. The dialogue is very entertaining....more
I read the edition published in 2023 by New York Review Books. DON’T LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT was first published in 1967. A young Englishwoman comes of aI read the edition published in 2023 by New York Review Books. DON’T LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT was first published in 1967. A young Englishwoman comes of age after World War Two. It’s a first person narrative. What lured me in was its narrator’s outlook, borrowed from Jane Austen. She grows up in a rectory. Her parents live a morally upright, self-denying existence. She wants to escape. There are points at which this book appears to be a memoir, but it is fiction by a writer so skilled as to make it seem artless. It is not relentlessly sad (aka Kitchen Sink) or recklessly happy (Mod). It is a realistic, matter-of-fact description of a single woman in London in 1950s. Florence King’s memoir from the late seventies, CONFESSIONS OF A FAILED SOUTHERN LADY has much the same tone, although King’s more willing to go for comic exaggeration. If you liked that, I think you’ll find DON’T LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT rather similar....more
I’ve read four of the books in the Martin Beck series, but not in order. I read the first two, and then the fifth or sixth. MAN IN THE BALCONY is the I’ve read four of the books in the Martin Beck series, but not in order. I read the first two, and then the fifth or sixth. MAN IN THE BALCONY is the third if you’re going in order. It is the only one I’ve read so far which maintains its tension throughout. The Martin Beck series conveys the idea of the teamwork involved in police work. This series succeeds best in scenes wherein the police interview witnesses. The authors began their careers as crime reporters. I imagine they based much of what they put in their novels on what they learned as reporters. While they don’t sentimentalize the force, they do show what dedication to police work means for the lives of those who choose to pursue it. ...more
I read the translation by Joan Tate. My favorite part was the visit to a public swimming area. The Swedish detective at the center of these books meetsI read the translation by Joan Tate. My favorite part was the visit to a public swimming area. The Swedish detective at the center of these books meets the Hungarian detective to talk about a case both are investigating. The Hungarian detective actually wades through the pool holding a briefcase. While not overtly comic, it does seem to be a wry commentary on the fears of being overheard. Hungary was an Eastern Bloc country when this was written. Earlier in the book, the Hungarian does not seem kind to the visiting Swede. But nevertheless, when they first meet, after what seems to be a confrontation, the Hungarian detective starts extolling the virtues of Hungarian pastries and bistros and the local swimming spot. The Swedish detective takes the cue and says he enjoys swimming. So they arrange to meet. And the result is the amusing picture of a very stern authority figure waist-deep in a pool, carrying his briefcase above the water as he and his visitor duck little archways and fountains and hear the noise of a crowd in the wave pool. (That's a pool with artificially created waves, just like the pool they used to advertise in my home country - the USA - at New jersey's Palisades Park. So I was given an idea while reading this: Amusement parks, in the sixties - when I grew up - were the same in Communist countries as they were in the United States. A pool with fake waves is a thrill wherever you go. Martin Beck is the most realistic cop I've seen portrayed in a mystery novel. He is thorough, not very happy in his home life, but, nevertheless, he HAS a home life. The dissolute people he seeks to arrest are not much different from him. This gives him indigestion....more
I read the English translation by Lois Roth, published in London by Victor Gollancz in 1968. The Swedish original came out in 1965. This is the first I read the English translation by Lois Roth, published in London by Victor Gollancz in 1968. The Swedish original came out in 1965. This is the first in the Martin Beck series. There were ten books altogether, published between 1965 and 1975. I had not heard of this series until a month ago, when a friend recommended it. I see from various articles and reviews that the duo behind these detective novels, Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, are considered innovators and that Stieg Larsson followed in the tradition they created. (He wrote THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO.) I can't attest to the originality of ROSEANNA, because so many detective novels of the present age provide the same backdrop: A homicide detective deals with the daily grind in the police department and confronts existential evil. This is what I expect from a mystery in 2023. I would say ROSEANNA reaches these expectations. I would say many detective novels before 1965 deal with the same themes, so the innovation must lie somewhere else. I've read that Sjowall and Wahloo were Marxists. If you put a gun to my head, I couldn't say I found a single trace of Marxist ideology in this book. But I didn't grow up in Sweden. What I will say is ROSEANNE is about good and evil, and that's what most mysteries are about. To be brief, the book is at its best when suspects are being interviewed. Most of these interviews are presented as transcripts, and they are riveting. Sjowall and Wahloo show a keen interest in character in these instances. I think the parts dealing with police procedure are irritatingly repetitious; yet I would point out this is deliberate. The authors wish us to realize that part of the sacrifice police detectives make involves surrendering to mind-numbing routine. There is, throughout this novel, a sense of dread. Days, weeks and months of sitting in an office with sweating colleagues awaiting a lead are described in words shaped to make you feel the boredom. There is a very realistic traffic jam as the cops respond to a call they must answer immediately. It is well-rendered. I particularly admired that scene. It was totally realistic. I recommend this book to people who have read a good number of mysteries. It does not move with the rapidity of Georges Simenon's devastating thrillers; it doesn't make the police department look cozy, as many of even the grimmest novels do; but its hero, Martin Beck, is a soldier of sorts; he has no time for introspection. Happy or not, he proceeds....more
I read the translation by Amy and Ken Knoespel published by Random House in 1971. I believe this is the sixth in the Martin Beck series. I meant to reaI read the translation by Amy and Ken Knoespel published by Random House in 1971. I believe this is the sixth in the Martin Beck series. I meant to read these in order, but, while waiting for the third one to arrive on Interlibrary Loan, I didn't have the willpower NOT to read another in the series. A lot happened between books and Sjowall and Wahloo caught me up. The murder in this one, of a man making a dinner speech at a posh hotel, is interesting, and a few of the interrogations are interesting. As we get to know the Swedish police force through these books, we begin to know about their interactions with each other. Missing a few books, I noticed some of the interactions in this book would have been easier to grasp had I read each preceding book in succession. This is not a drawback; it was relatively easy to fill in the dots, but I have to say I think the authors want us to get to know the lives of these policemen in a gradually building story. There is something rather slack in the telling here, and I attribute it to cultural differences that a translation from Norwegian to English can't very easily surmount. After all, people get around on bicycles and ferry boats in these books, and something called "the hydrofoil." There is a hint that nothing is efficient and that half the country is on vacation. I still hear about the long vacations in that part of the world, but this book makes it clear that these vacations are not necessarily welcome by the people being put out of work for months on end. I was ten years old in 1970, and the United States was going at the speed of lightning. Reading MURDER AT THE SAVOY, I kept having to adjust to a world where EVERYBODY hates a millionaire. What I find really intriguing is that I find American life in 2023 closer to the Sweden of 1970, where oligarchs run the show, than to American life of 1970. Anyway, there are moments of suspense and of sardonic humor involving incompetent policemen. I found the portrayal of a sex worker rather harsh, but that's because it was judgemental; not because it wasn't realistic.
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