Graham Greene’s Travels With My Aunt might be Greene’s drollest novels. This movie version, starring Maggie Smith, captures the cleverness of the book but adds some spice of its own. Maggie Smith, after her 1970 Oscar win for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, takes on a completely different role in the outlandish Aunt Augusta. Directed with panache by George Cukor, with the adroit Alec McCowen as Maggie Smith’s bewildered nephew Henry, the screwball Travels with My Aunt will delight you with its madcap machinations. GRADE: A
TRAVELS WITH MY AUNT
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I was a big fan of Dan Chaon’s Await Your Reply so I had great expectations for Chaon’s latest short story collection, Stay Awake. And, mostly, those expectations were fulfilled. Chaon writes about guys whose girl friends get drunk and fall out of trees. Then, at the hospital, the girl friend (perhaps under the influence of Happy Drugs) admits she’s married. But, there’s more to the story. In fact, after you finish a Dan Chaon story, you’ll be thinking about it for awhile because there’s always more to his stories. My only quibble is a story titled “Thinking of You in Your Time of Sorrow” which is written in the second person. I dislike stories written in the second person because the technique distances me from the story. There are plenty of strong stories in this collection that will stay with you for a long time. Dan Chaon is one of finest practitioners of the art of the short story. Stay Awake proves it. GRADE: A-
After much delay, Mad Men returns to AMC with a new 2-hour episode tonight at 9 P.M. EDT. Check your local listings for the time in your area. I’ve been a fan of Mad Men from the beginning. I’ve even persuaded some of my students in my ADVERTISING classes to watch Mad Men and see how advertising was done in the 1960s. Mad Men surprises its viewers with deft plot-twists and startling behaviors by the remarkable cast of characters. Although Jon Hamm as Don Draper gets most of the attention, I love the women in this program: Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss), Betty Francis (née Hofstadt, formerly Draper) (January Jones), and Joan Harris (née Holloway) (Christina Hendricks). They could be the best cast of women on TV. If you haven’t been watching Mad Men you’re missing one of the best series ever.
The wait is finally over and The Hunger Games delivered on all the hype. The movie version follows Suzanne Collins’ Young Adult dystopian novel very closely. Jennifer Lawrence is brilliant as Katniss Everdeen, a teenager who volunteers to participate in the future society’s version of gladiatorial games broadcast as reality TV. After a vaguely referred to catastrophe, the United States has been replaced by a Capitol District and 12 Districts. Katniss is from District 12, a mining district. Each year, all the districts must send two teenagers to complete in the Games. Of the 24 contestants, only one will survive the battle of the fittest. Yes, it’s grim. But, the movie version tones down the violence of the novel (probably to get that coveted PG-13 rating) while not compromising on story elements. Although the movie is over 2 hours long, character development is sketchy. I found that reading the book first gave me more insight into the characters. The Hunger Games should be one of the box office champs of 2012. GRADE: A-
Todd Mason mentioned R. A. Lafferty and his first novel, Past Master, in a comment months ago, but I didn’t forget it. I just moved Past Master higher in the Read Real Soon stack. I read Past Master back in 1968. Rereading Past Master brought back the zaniness of Lafferty’s writing and the impatience I sometimes experience reading Lafferty’s work. A thousand years in the future, an Earth colony called Astrobe, is in severe crisis. Their perfect society is disintegrating. The elite spirit Thomas More (the author of Utopia) from 1535 Old Earth time. More’s time on Astrobe resembles a dream-like series of encounters with witches, hydras, mechanical killers, and bizarre aliens. And that’s always been my problem with Lafferty’s work. In small doses, Lafferty’s wackiness can amuse. But in excess, the extreme surrealism can prove tiresome. The Past Master was nominated for a Nebula and a Hugo, but won neither. If you’re in the mood for something very “different,” check out Past Master.
Art Scott and Steve Stilwell have reread the Nero Wolfe series over 50 times! I am not a rereader. There are just too many books I haven’t read. But Patricia Meyer Spacks makes a strong case for rereading in this enlightening book. Spacks starts out writing about the books of her youth: Alice in Wonderland and the Narnia series. She moves on to books that do not fare well with rereading: Lucky Jim and Catcher in the Rye. Spacks favorite books to reread are Jane Austen’s novels of manners. Emma and Pride and Prejudice are her favorites. As Spacks points out, the book doesn’t change, but the reader does. After reading Spacks’ eloquent defense of rereading, I’m more open to the possibility of rereading some of my favorite books. After all, I reread Slayground by “Richard Stark” for the recent Forgotten Books celebration of Donald E. Westlake. GRADE: B+
John Jeremiah Sullivan’s off-beat collection of essays has something for just about everyone. Sullivan goes to a religious rock concert and comes up with some surprises. Sullivan’s brother gets electrocuted and nearly dies; an incident that becomes an episode on William Shatner’s Rescue 911. Then Sullivan visits post-Katrina Mississippi. Horrors abound. Sullivan writes about the recording of Michael Jackson’s best albums with Quincy Jones and legendary recording engineer Bruce Swedien. I had to break out my copies of Off the Wall to hear what Sullivan was writing about. In that vein, Sullivan’s searing “The Final Comeback of Axl Rose” (the Guns N’ Roses leader) brings Rose’s bizarre life into focus. There are essays on cave art and the teen soap opera, One Tree Hill. Sullivan’s range is impressive and so is his writing. GRADE: A-
“Like Henry James on Viagra.” After reading that blurb on the back of the book jacket on History of a Pleasure Seeker I fell for the cunning marketing. It’s 1907 and Piet Barol, a talented but poor young man, is hired to be the tutor to a disturbed young son of a wealthy hotel tycoon in Amsterdam. The tycoon’s beautiful but neglected wife begins an affair with Piet. That, you would think, would be enough for the reader to concentrate on. But the author throws in the tycoon’s two flirtatious daughters, the mysterious mental problems of the son, the banking crisis that required J. P. Morgan to intervene, and flashbacks to Piet’s past. Piet isn’t so much a pleasure seeker as an ambitious young man on the make. History of a Pleasure Seeker is basically a Horatio Alger story with some sex thrown in. If you’re looking for pleasure, you’ll have to seek it elsewhere. GRADE: C