Count Bruga

Is it possible for a satire published in 1926, about a poet now largely forgotten, to provide a reader nearly a century later with enjoyment? With Ben Hecht writing, the answer is a qualified yes. Hecht's send-up of his friend, Maxwell Bodenheim, has no doubt lost some of its punch as the mists of time have obscured the public character of the Greenwich Village poet. And the fictionalized version, Count Hippolyt Bruga, is mostly tedious. But there is a long section in the novel's core, about a magician, that is as sensitively done as Mann's Mario and the Magician and just about as creepy.