Many people consider James Wood as the best book critic around today. I’m one of them. But what makes James Wood so good is his versatility. The essay that opens this book, “The Fun Stuff: Homage to Keith Moon,” told me a lot about drummer for The Who that I didn’t know. And I immediately wanted to drop everything and listen to Keith Moon play. After reading Wood’s essay on Edmund Wilson, I wanted to drop everything and read my Library of America volumes of Wilson’s work. You get the idea. Good critics motivate you to read (or listen) to the subjects of their reviews. After reading Wood’s essay on George Orwell, it would be hard to resist reading some Orwell. James Woods’ essays range from current novels to literary classics. His knowledge is impressive. The most compelling essay in this book is “Wounder and Wounded,” an essay on Nobel Prize winner V. S. Naipaul. Naipaul admits to beating his lover, Margaret Gooding, saying, “I was very violent with her for two days with my hand… Her face was bad. She couldn’t really appear in public.” Wood lets the readers draw their own conclusions about the Nobel Laureate. GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
The Fun Stuff: Homage to Keith Moon 3
W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz 18
Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go 30
Thinking: Norman Rush 39
Cormac McCarthy’s The Road 52
Edmund Wilson 66
Aleksandar Hemon 91
Beyond a Boundary: Netherland as Postcolonial Novel 102
Wounder and Wounded 117
Robert Alter and the King James Bible 130
Tolstoy’s War and Peace 145
Marilynne Robinson 162
Lydia Davis 171
Containment: Trauma and Manipulation in Ian McEwan 182
Richard Yates 194
George Orwell’s Very English Revolution 206
“Unfathomable!” (Mikhail Lermontov) 229
Thomas Hardy 243
Geoff Dyer 258
Paul Auster’s Shallowness 267
“Reality Examined to the Point of Madness”: László Krasznahorkai 279
Ismail Kadare 292
Eglish Muddle: Alan Hollinghurst 309
Life’s White Machine: Ben Lerner 322
Packing My Father-in-Law’s Library 329
Acknowledgments 341

With the record-breaking April opening of Captain America: The Winter Soldier–$96.2 million–and with Spiderman 2 about to open in a few weeks, MARVEL is on fire. Avengers Confidential: Black Widow & Punisher is an entertaining new animated feature. SHIELD sends the Black Widow and the Punisher to investigate a global terrorist organization, LEVIATHAN. As always, there are some surprises that spring up during this mission. If you’re a fan of the MARVEL universe, you’ll enjoy the action and suspense in Avengers Confidential: Black Widow & Punisher. GRADE: B+

Bob Mankoff is the current Cartoon Editor of The New Yorker. He’s also a gifted cartoonist as his classic “How About Never” plainly shows. What I liked about Mankoff’s book were the discussions of what makes a cartoon funny. Mankoff knows every cartoon (literally!) The New Yorker has ever published. He talks about how humor has changed over the decades and provides insightful examples. If you’re interested in how humor works, how American humor has evolved, and predictions about the future of cartoons, How About Never explores all of these topics with grace and wit. It doesn’t get better than this. GRADE: A

Welcome back! Thanks to Patrick, the blog lives again! Things are still not quite back to Normal, but I’ll be tweaking the blog to restore it to it’s former fun state. Please be patient.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier reunites Captain America with Nick Fury and the Black Widow of SHIELD. Samuel L. Jackson is his usual gruff self. Scarlet Johansson is bodacious as usual. Anthony Mackie plays an effective role as The Falcon (the first Marvel African-American superhero) in some eye-popping flying scenes. There are several surprises in this movie so I don’t want to spoil them with too much information. If you love action, Captain America: The Winter Soldier has plenty. Excellent cast, intelligent script, and I can’t wait for the sequel. GRADE: A

I’m a big fan of Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories. After Lancer published the Conan stories in paperback with those great Frazetta covers, there was a huge demand for more Conan stories. Many writers turned their talents to producing Conan stories: L. Sprague de Camp, Lin Carter, Andy Offutt, and plenty of others. One of my favorite writers of Conan pastiches is Karl Edward Wagner. Wagner’s Conan is clever as well as powerful. In Conan: The Road of Kings Conan is about to be hanged. He escapes that fate, but finds himself involved in a civil war. When a sorcerer shows up to tip the balance of power to the rebels, Conan argues against using dark sorcery to win the kingdom. Conan’s advice is ignored and an even more malignant force than the dictator is unleashed. If you’re a fan of sword & sorcery novels, you’l find a lot to like in Conan: The Road to Kings.

I read this Winston Science Fiction juvenile novel back in the 1950s. Danger: Dinosaurs! was published in 1953 and when I reread it, I was struck by Ed McBain/Evan Hunter’s progressive characterizations. One of the major characters is an African-American who plays a key role in the plot. I read most of the Winston SF series and I can’t recall another African-American character in any of them. Danger: Dinosaurs! also introduces a notion unique in time-travel stories: that events in the past can forgotten when the time-travelers return to the future. This story of a group who encounters problems during their visit over a 100 million years ago was thrilling when I was a kid. Even in this early novel, the strengths of Ed McBain/Evan Hunter’s story-telling were obvious. Ed McBain turned to writing crime fiction, but this science fiction novel has plenty of suspense and action.

Buffalo is hosting Rounds Two and Three of the NCAA Tournament. All the hotels are sold out and estimates predict a $14 million infusion of cash into our local economy from hosting the Tournament. The match-ups are Syracuse vs. Western Michigan, Ohio State vs. Dayton, Villanova vs. Milwaukee, and Connecticut vs. St. Joseph’s. Clearly, this is Syracuse country so if you’re watching the games on your HDTV, you’re going to see a lot of orange in the crowd. I think Florida will win the NCAA Championship. What teams are you rooting for?

I read Kem Nunn’s brilliant Tapping the Source back in 1984 when it was first published. The years went by and I haven’t read a Kem Nunn book until I happened on Chance. Dr. Chance is a neuropsychologist whose life is crumbling. He’s going through a bitter divorce. The IRS is auditing him (and he owes Big Bucks!) and Chance is selling his prized furniture to generate some money while he struggles with his problems. Chance goes from the frying pan into the fire when he engages in an intimate relationship with a patient with multiple personalities. Her abusive husband is a Homicide Detective with psychopathic tendencies. I kept turning the pages as Dr. Chance fell deeper and deeper into Big Trouble. It’s been a long time since I read a novel this suspenseful. GRADE: A-

The Venture Bros.: The Fifth Season is an animated series that appeared last year on the Cartoon Network’s “Adult Swim.” These episodes continue the fun and frolic and action of the previous seasons. The Venture Bros. series is a pastiche of the old Johnny Quest adventures. Imagine that Johnny Quest grew up to be super-scientist Dr. Thaddeus Venture. His teenage sons, Hank and Dean, resemble the Hardy Boys. The series makes fun (in an affectionate way) of Johnny Quest and other action-adventure series. The cover on this Blu-ray box looks like the artwork that used to be on Grosset & Dunlap’s Tom Swift books. I love the giant pterodactyl on the Venture jet! If you’re in the mood for some animated action blended with some humor, check out The Venture Bros. GRADE: A