Write It When I'm Gone

Thomas DeFrank's private conversations with Gerald Ford reveal less of the bumbler of popular imagination and more of the shrewd politician who, after all, was at or near the center of things in Washington for 30 years. These interviews, kept sealed until the former president's death, paint a Ford who was not above holding grudges (against Carter and Reagan) and cashing in after leaving office by giving speeches and serving on corporate boards. He even took a cut from Franklin Mint coins depicting his swearing in. But mostly Ford emerges as an honest, diligent plodder. There is plenty of gossipy material, as when he says that Bill Clinton has a "sex sickness" and needs treatment, or wonders why no one in the Clinton Cabinet resigned during the Lewinsky scandal. Ford was astonished that they could continue to work for a president who had lied to them. In this era in which federal legislators distribute pictures of their genitals, that can be filed under Quaint.

All the King's Men

All the King's Men is widely considered to be a great political novel, but the deeds of Willie Stark and his crew won't surprise anyone who has paid even scant attention to the workings of the world. What makes this a great novel is the beautiful writing describing the personal odyssey of Stark's fixer, Jack Burden. There is also the the 19th century tale of a Burden relative, Cass Mastern, an episode that could make a novel in itself. Robert Penn Warren's skill at imagery and simile lights up these passages. Everything is connected in this novel, and so in life; a ripple from a stone dropped into a pond will spread out with unforeseen and sometimes unthinkable results. That, more than the ambiguous perfidy of Willie Stark, is the idea that will linger long after this novel is put down.

Invisible

Hugues de Montalembert, a painter and photographer, was blinded by paint thinner during a robbery in New York in 1978. This impressionistic memoir is a reminder that the senses must be fully engaged to be useful. It is not good enough to look at something without seeing it, or to hear without listening. Montalembert is not courageous, although that is how it seems at first glance; he is simply irrepressibly alive.

The Dream Life of Balso Snell

In its first few pages, Nathanael West's short novel gives hopes of being an exercise in fantasy and fine writing in the manner of James Branch Cabell. Ultimately, however, the reader is imprisoned in an annoying fever dream from which wakefulness cannot come soon enough.

Same Difference

As mentioned below (March Violets), the plots of detective stories don't interest me as much as the dialogue, characterizations, and atmosphere. As Philip Kerr spun out a believable version of 1936 Berlin, so Martin Harris creates an alive and gritty New York City of 1976. The details are right even when they seem wrong: I did not think the NFL had playoff wild cards back then, but it did. Most important, from the first page the reader believes that what he is reading really happened. That is a basic hurdle that many of today's overpraised literary types (Franzen, Tower) never clear to my satisfaction, so it is refreshing to see it done by a writer toiling in relative obscurity.

A Cool Million

Nathanael West's satire on the Horatio Alger myth takes literal chunks out of its hero -- eye, leg, thumb, scalp -- who nonetheless maintains his guileless hopes. West's aim is so wide that no one is spared. For example, a certain Sylvanus Snodgrasse is neatly dispatched: "Like many another 'poet,' he blamed his literary failure on the American public instead of on his own lack of talent, and his desire for revolution was really a desire for revenge. ... Having lost faith in himself, he thought it his duty to undermine the nation's faith in itself." And that may be the secret of the best satire: It cannot merely be a outpouring of bitter humor and scorn. At its center there must be a tiny, flickering spark of love.