The choice this month for the Wall Street Journal Book Club is Evelyn Waugh’s A Handful of Dust. I read this book back in the Sixties when DELL published Waugh’s work in very nice paperback editions. You can join the discussion about A Handful of Dust at http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2015/06/03/does-evelyn-waugh-care-about-his-characters-wsj-book-club/ A Handful of Dust starts out like a P.G. Wodehouse comedy with a young couple who are having marital problems. But mid-way through the novel a tragedy occurs that changes the tone and trajectory of the book. My favorite Waugh novel is Scoop, but there’s plenty to admire in A Handful of Dust.

In case you saw the previous post and were confused:

Is George really a woman most skilled at teaching you, his faithful blog audience, how best to apply lip-liner?
Does anyone know what he really looks like, is he a computer algorithm built solely to assign music, tv shows, and films grades on this site?

Katie and I are here to clear up that mystery.
Here’s Mom and Dad on their wedding anniversary this past December. Look how real they are!

So Happy Birthday Dad, so excited to see you in July.
Love, Katie and Patrick.

I’ve read several of Harold Bloom’s books about literature. Bloom’s new book, The Daemon Knows discusses the 12 American writers Bloom most admires (his two personal favorites are Whitman and Hart Crane). If I were teaching a literature class, I’d mine The Daemon Knows for all the biographical and critical backgrounds on these 12 writers. Bloom discusses each writer’s major works in detail And here is where I had a problem. About a third of A Daemon Knows is quoted material. Yes, of the 500+ pages about 200 pages are quotes from the works of Whitman, Melville, Emerson, Dickinson, Hawthorne, James, Twain, Frost, Stevens, Eliot, Faulkner and Crane. That’s a big chunk of this book. And Bloom rambles from topic to topic. That can be annoying, too. But, if you’re interested in any or all of these classic American writers, A Daemon Knows will enlighten you. GRADE: B+
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Why These Twelve?
Daemonic Preludium
1: Walt Whitman and Herman Melville
2: Ralph Waldo Emerson and Emily Dickinson
3: Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry James
4: Mark Twain and Robert Frost
5: Wallace Stevens and T. S. Eliot
6: William Faulkner and Hart Crane
Coda: The Place of the Daemon
Notes
Index

At the end of each semester, I receive Thank You notes from students. Here are a couple that just arrived. You can see why it’s hard for me to think about retirement when I’m teaching students like these.

Professor Kelley

With great thanks,
(name withheld)

And then there’s this one from a student who emigrated from Yemen:

Dr. Kelley,

(name withheld)

Melissa McCarthy plays a mousy clerical worker at the CIA who volunteers for a secret mission. During the silliness of Spy we see Melissa McCarthy develop into an action hero. Jude Law plays a suave spy and Jason Statham portrays a tough-as-nails spy (a spoof of the character Statham usually plays in action movies). Directed and written by Paul Feig (who directed Bridesmaids and The Heat), Spy will entertain you and make you laugh. If you liked Bridesmaids and The Heat you’ll like Spy. GRADE: B

Michael Shea wrote convincing pastiches of Jack Vance’s The Dying Earth. This collection of Nifft the Lean stories blends Jack Vance and Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser to produce heroic fantasies mixed with magic and action. Nifft and his partner, Barnar Hammer-Hand, use guile and sorcery to pull off their grand enterprises. With plenty of exotic locales, fabulous creatures, weird magic, and chatty demons these stories will captivate you. This edition is an omnibus edition of Nifft the Lean (1982) and The Mines of Behemoth (1997) which were published separately. Whether you read the individual volumes or this combined package, you’ll find wonders waiting for you.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Nifft the Lean
Come Then, Mortal, We Will Seek Her Soul… 13
The Pearls of the Vampire Queen… 77
The Fishing of the Demon Sea… 125
The Goddess in Glass… 273
The Mines of Behemoth… 345

Because of a wardrobe malfunction, the Barden Bellas–national champion Collegiate A Cappella group–is suspended.
the only way they can defend their title is to enter the World Championship in Copenhagen…and win it. The problem: no American A Cappella group has ever won the world title (as one commentator says, “The world hates us.”). Many of the women from Perfect Pitch return to sing their hearts out. Of course, problems abound: romantic problems, relationship problems, work problems, future problems, etc. The audience for the Perfect Pitch movies is twenty-something women. Perfect Pitch 2 is already the third highest grossing comedy ($150 million and still growing) ever (the first is The Hangover at $467 million and the second is Austin Powers in Goldmember at $297 million). I’m sure the success of Pitch Perfect 2 will produce a Pitch Perfect 3 in a couple years. GRADE: B

My favorite essays in Sometimes An Art are “History and the Creative Imagination” and “The Search for Perfection.” In “History and the Creative Imagination” Bernard Bailyn writes about his favorite contemporary historians: Perry Miller, Charles McLean Andrews, Lewis Namier, and Ronald Syme. After reading this essay, I wanted to drop everything and read the books that Bailyn discusses. “The Search for Perfection” starts with a discussion of one of my favorite writers: Isaiah Berlin. Berlin shows how the imposition of “Utopias” leads to disaster: “the repressive power of the Soviet state, the annihilatory power of the Nazi regime, the mind-blinding power of Maoist gangs, the suffocating power of Islamic fundamentalism”. If you’re in the mood for some brilliant history written by multiple Pulitzer Prize winner Bernard Bailyn, Sometimes An Art will delight you. GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Preface

PART ONE
On History and the Struggle to Get It Right

1. Considering the Slave Trade: History and Memory
2. Context in History
3. Three Trends in Modern History
4. History and the Creative Imagination
5. The Losers

PART TWO
Peripheries of the Early British Empire

6. Thomas Hutchinson in Context: The Ordeal Revisited
7. England’s Cultural Provinces: Scotland and America
(co-authored with John Clive)
8. Peopling the Peripheries
9. The Search for Perfection: Atlantic Dimensions

Appendix
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index

I’ve enjoyed the various Batman animated series. This new movie features The Penguin and another diabolical plot involving robotic animals. Batman gets help from The Flash, Green Arrow, Nightwing, and Red Robin to solve this case. Unlike the previous Son of Batman, Animal Instincts is aimed at a younger audience. It didn’t bother me, but it might bother you. Special features include Penguin: High Society Criminal, a collection of DC Nations Shorts, and two bonus DC cartoons from the DC Vault. Check out the trailer below. GRADE: B