The Thin Man

I don't spend much time trying to figure out detective stories; I usually just go along for the ride. In this one, however, I had a pet theory that turned out to be 180 degrees from the actual solution. Nick and Nora Charles weren't quite as fascinating and witty as I expected them to be, but there was enough snappy dialogue to keep interest high through a quite labyrinthine mystery. Of course when Charles explains it all in the last chapter it sounds so very simple.

The Glass Key

Dashiell Hammett's The Glass Key is hardboiled all right but more thinly plotted than his other books. Ned Beaumont is a character to remember – smart, savage and subtle all in one.

Chocky

Chocky is the imaginary friend of an 11-year-old ... or is it imaginary? The science fiction writer John Wyndham, probably best known for The Day of the Triffids, published this short novel a year before his death in 1969. His skill in unwinding the story, from an apparently innocent incident on the first page to a startling conclusion, is superb. Everything builds in a suspenseful, cinematic fashion. Steven Spielberg has reportedly secured the film rights, but I imagine it being done by Hitchcock, alas.

The Dain Curse

If Red Harvest was a little rough around the edges, Dashiell Hammett's The Dain Curse, his second novel, shows the full flowering of his talent. The shift reminds me a little of the transition from John Dos Passos's Streets of Night, a good enough novel published in 1923, and Manhattan Transfer, the masterpiece of two years later. Hammett is completely in control of his material and form, which is evident in the fact that, as complicated as the mystery is, the reader is able to follow it easily. That wasn't the case in his first novel, at least for me. The Dain Curse is a multigenerational saga of murder and deceit broken into three "books," each self-contained but linked to the others. It's a bravura piece of plotting and style.

Nightmare Alley

William Lindsay Gresham's Nightmare Alley, published in 1946, succeeds on multiple fronts. It is a harrowing rendering of a con man's rise and fall; a seedy portrait of carny life; and a psychological biography of a damaged man. Throw in tarot cards and degrading behavior and you have a rich novel, written in a sharp style, that will linger in the memory.

Red Harvest

The title of Dashiell Hammett's first novel, Red Harvest, refers to the blood spilled throughout its pages. The writer drew from his experiences as a Pinkerton detective in his stories, which broke new ground in frankness and violence. A reader from the vantage point of nearly a century since Red Harvest's publication would do well to consider a few extenuating circumstances before judging it too harshly. Since it was originally written as a serial, the chapters have a self-contained aspect that impedes the flow of the novel. Also, the startling originality of Hammett's effort has faded with the years and the explosion of copycats in the genre. The best way to read Red Harvest is probably to imagine yourself in 1929 and encountering it for what it is: a new form of expression. On those terms, it is an undoubted masterpiece.

The Maltese Falcon

It is impossible to read Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon without imagining the actors from John Huston's 1941 film, and for that Huston deserves high praise. He had found the 1931 pre-Code version a disappointment and scripted a movie that followed the book pretty much right down the line. Hammett's snappy dialogue was a template for those who followed, both his equal (Chandler, Macdonald) and hacks. In the novel especially, the black bird is the perfect vehicle through which ethics and desires are revealed. A morality play with no moral, the book is a dark pleasure.

The Ringmaster

The Ringmaster by Darryl Ponicsan (author of The Last Detail) works less as a novel and more as fictionalized reportage. In that capacity, it provides an interesting look into the workings of a medium-sized circus circa 1975. After a while, the travel and staffing problems become repetitive, but the reader will put down the novel as an insider into a grimy subculture.

Beloved

Toni Morrison's Beloved is a difficult book to evaluate. The magical aspects didn't work for me, which undermined the entire project, and the text was stylistically erratic. By the latter I mean that there were large chunks of the book that flowed beautifully and meaningfully, only to be stopped by dense "writerly" passages that seemed to be nothing so much as showing off. It is doubtless a novel that would benefit from multiple readings; maybe I'll give it another go sometime.

The Last Detail

This 1970 novel by ex-sailor Darryl Ponicsan follows the classic picaresque road trip formula, but with some added satisfactions. The story is simple: Two Navy lifers must escort a seaman from Norfolk to Portsmouth Naval Prison. The young man has been convicted of stealing $40 from a charity collection box and sentenced to eight years and a "DD" – dishonorable discharge. The excessive punishment weighs on the two Shore Patrol men, "Bad-Ass" and "Mule," to the extent that they decide to show the convict a good time before he's locked up. Military injustice, racism, the perils of thinking that "doing your job" is enough to excuse anything – these themes and others are effectively explored in this entertaining, bawdy novel.

Babbitt

George Babbitt is a type: conventional, complacent, and a bit crooked. He is also an individual who comes to life in the pages of Sinclair Lewis's famous novel. It is interesting to compare what Lewis achieved in Babbitt with Dreiser's accomplishment in An American Tragedy or, more aptly perhaps, Jennie Gerhardt. Neither writer will ever be praised as a prose stylist, but I give the edge, slightly, to Lewis for his ability to dig into the subtleties of human desire where Dreiser takes a more blunt approach. Babbitt wants to break out of his confining yet comfortable shell, but when he does all the material goods he so adores (and his wife) are put at risk. So he inches back into the fold, mostly. Lewis gives Babbitt's son, Ted, a chance at the end of the novel to break out for new territory, bringing a beam of light into an otherwise dark story. 

The Loved One

Reviewed here 11 years ago, I returned to this Evelyn Waugh novel in preparation for a discussion of the 1965 film version directed by Tony Richardson. The last name of character Aimee Thanatogenos, I now realize, appropriately means "born of death" and her first name translates as "the loved one." What is striking in the text is not the satirizing of America but the way Waugh dispenses with dramatic set-pieces. For example, when Thanatogenos learns, to her horror, that her presumed future husband works at a pet cemetery, the reader is given nothing more than the fact that she attended the funeral of a parrot and saw him there. Everything else has been subtracted. This also happens with the suicide by hanging of Sir Francis Hinsley, which most other authors would have licked their chops at writing. Instead Waugh refers to it, almost in passing, as funeral preparations are described. The Loved One is a real masterpiece of wit and concision.  

Cavett

We get the culture we deserve, and today we don't deserve a Dick Cavett, apparently. The splitting of mass media into thousands of tiny slices has made commonality of experience much rarer. Shows that draw 1 million viewers today are hits; in the '70s the top-rated shows drew 30 million viewers a week. I can't even picture a "public intellectual" today of the kind that Cavett regularly interviewed. Does one exist? Cavett takes the form of a Q&A biography, packed with entertaining show-biz anecdotes. The Nebraskan who landed in New York via Yale was a hustler who knocked on doors – literally – and wandered into offices looking for work. As an actor, writer, stand-up comedian, and eventually host of his own show, Cavett relied on his quick wit, a quality evident throughout this 1974 volume.

The Conformist

Bernardo Bertolucci's The Conformist, released in 1970, is a film I have returned to repeatedly over the years with much admiration. The source material, a novel of the same name by Alberto Moravia, sat unread on my bookshelf for years – until now. It is a cool, clinical look at a man who knows himself to be different (as a child he exhibited cruelty to animals and shot a man who tried to molest him) and makes the decision, but more importantly takes actions, to conform. This leads to a monstrous betrayal, but it's all in a day's work for Marcello Clerici – a fascist when fascists are in charge, then suddenly an anti-fascist when Mussolini is removed. Though he does not preach about the dangers of a mass mindset, Moravia excavates the rotten, empty individual soul that makes all such movements possible.

Squeeze Me

Perhaps if I hadn't read a few Elmore Leonard and John D. MacDonald novels this effort by Carl Hiaasen would have landed with something other than a thud. 

Ditch

This Herman Koch novel doesn't carry the same energy and controversy as earlier books like The Dinner and Summer House with Swimming Pool. In essence it is the story of a man who is undone by bizarre suspicions, with side plots about his elderly father's bizarre behavior and a scientist friend with bizarre ideas. Sound bizarre enough? It actually is more plodding than strange.

Weapons of Math Destruction

Mathematician Cathy O'Neil examines the role that algorithms play in society and finds many of them dangerous and destructive. Mainly because of a "negative feedback loop," these programs reinforce their own biases and create a death spiral for people, mainly poor, trying to get a job, credit, or get into college. The diagnosis is convincing; the epilogue in which solutions are offered seems, unfortunately, wildly unrealistic. Greed and self-interest are far too firmly entrenched, as witness the recent revelations by the Facebook whistleblower.

Lolita

Despite having not read Lolita, it was no surprise that the element of eroticism was entirely absent in favor of sly humor, mostly wordplay. After all, who would expect Nabokov to write smut? The puns, obscure references, and French phrases would benefit from a closer second reading, but a brisk survey gives a satisfying foretaste. I doubt that much ink has been spilled discussing the suspense the novel creates, but for me that was no small part of its appeal.

An Innocent Millionaire

The obituary of Stephen Vizinczey led me to the film of his first novel, In Praise of Older Women. That, in turn, led me to this 1983 novel about a young man's adventurous life and search for sunken treasure in the Bahamas. It is a big novel in terms of length, scope, and cast of characters, but it feels very intimate. It has humor, pathos, and a Balzac-like roster of rogues. Usually it is death to a novel when the writer tries to show off; but Vizinczey writes with such apparent ease and evident skill that it's not showing off: He's just that good.

Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription

In the early '80s I was taken with National Review and, especially, the personality of William F. Buckley, Jr. I went so far as to sneak in to a paid speech he gave to businessmen at a luxury hotel, then quoted from that speech in my own little right-wing college newsletter. Looking back, I think the attraction was more about going against the tide than any deep conviction about, say, supply-side economics. I also have come to think that the Helsinki Accords, achieved under Gerald Ford, had as much to do with the end of the Soviet Union as Buckley's sainted Ronald Reagan. But let that pass. This volume, published shortly after Buckley's death in 2008, collects pieces from his magazine's Notes & Asides column, including points of language, humor, and other miscellany broadly under the heading "fun." (Although obituaries and stinging complaints are featured, too.) I experienced a pang of nostalgia reading through these entries, also some melancholy that the movement Buckley launched has been dissolved into a toxic stew of Know-Nothingism.

Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible

Published in 2014, Peter Pomerantsev's investigation into the rot in Russian business and government is a cautionary tale. Using interviews with filmmakers, gangsters, and prostitutes as his entry points, the author unveils a devastating portrait of a corrupt, sick society with a mere wisp of democratic covering. For example, the mechanism used by gangsters to take over Moscow real estate for room to build their new towers can be quite direct: burn the old buildings down, sometimes with people still in them. The first half of the title is about where the United States is in 2021; whether the "everything" of the second half happens is an open question – just.

Blow Your House Down

I found out about Pat Barker watching Stanley and Iris, a 1990 film starring Jane Fonda and Robert De Niro based on her novel Union Street. Blow Your House Down is her second novel, published in 1984, and follows a group of prostitutes in a bleak northern English city. As a portrait of what women living on the edge have to endure, it is excellent. The dialogue and situations strike home. Usually I prefer a novel to intensify day-to-day experiences, not merely recount them, but these women have intensity enough for several novels.

Ways of Escape

The second and final volume of Graham Greene's autobiography has the author traveling across the globe in search of ... inspiration? excitement? sanity? Maybe all of the above. The nuts-and-bolts sections on how his novels were generated are highlights, as are some personal anecdotes about interesting people like Alexander Korda and Evelyn Waugh. The voluptuary element is present in a section about opium dens. But those seeking details of his relationships with women (and his longtime wife) will search in vain.

A Sort of Life

The first volume of Graham Greene's autobiography is cozy and companionable. From what was by all accounts a pleasant childhood in a large extended family, he heads off to Oxford, newspaper work, and early attempts at novel-writing. Some of the darker elements, such as his brief fascination with Russian Roulette and his psychoanalysis at a young age, deepen the self-portrait.

Enigma

Robert Harris's second novel, published in 1995, is one of dozens of books and movie treatments of the Bletchley Park codebreaking operation. In this telling, the technical aspects get full coverage without intruding into the personal drama that drives the plot. Another Harris success.

The Age of Skin

In these essays, the Croatian writer Dubravka Ugresic neatly dances along the line between astringency and bitterness, always keeping the reader on her side. "There's Nothing Here!" is a highlight, an account of the destruction of ex-Yugoslav memorials and landscapes and, with them, national memory.

The Sound of Waves

As I noted in a blog post a decade ago, Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote: "Writers who are truly original do not set out to fabricate new forms of expression. ... They attain their originality through extraordinary sincerity." Yukio Mishima's The Sound of Waves is an excellent example of this precept. It is a simple story of young love, told with beautiful imagery, set on a Japanese fishing island. The closed system of an island allows the author to mine his "own little postage stamp of native soil" for rich details on the fishing life, social hierarchies, and natural environment. 

Archangel

Put together like a Swiss watch, Archangel is an enjoyable Robert Harris thriller set in post-Soviet Russia.

It Would Be So Nice If You Weren't Here

Charles Grodin's memoir of his career in show business should be a template for all who follow. There is enough, but not too much, of his early life, and plenty of detail on the struggles to get going as an actor. Most of all, the book names names and is packed with entertaining anecdotes.

The Ghost

Robert Harris's The Ghost has a few welcome elements that are absent from his other novels. Firstly, it is written in the first person by a narrator with a sly sense of humor and slightly misanthopic bent. There are also five or six first-rate similes, to my mind the easiest way to spot a skilled writer. The story itself is a suspenseful page-flipper with a satisfying conclusion. 

Munich

Robert Harris's novel about the 1938 conference between Hitler and Neville Chamberlain makes compelling reading as fiction but also seems to have the underlying aim of rescuing the British prime minister's reputation from obloquy. While Chamberlain certainly does not emerge from the novel as any kind of hero, he does earn the reader's admiration for his dogged efforts to forestall war. As it happens, Hitler in 1945 said that he should have gone to war in 1938, when Britain's military was in a woeful state. Instead, under Chamberlain's direction, the nation launched a rearmament drive that resulted in a stiffer defense when war did come a year later. Those who continue to call Chamberlain an appeaser must be prepared to answer his question: Should Britain and France have gone to war in 1938 to defend parts of Czechoslovakia where a majority of the population was German and wanted to rejoin Germany?

Walking with Ghosts

Gabriel Byrne's memoir, while enjoyable, suffers from an over-emphasis on his childhood and a shortage of material on his acting career. Everyone thinks his or her childhood is exceptional, but most are not and do not merit pages and pages of dreamy reminiscences. 

The Second Sleep

Robert Harris has done speculative fiction before – Fatherland posited a world in which Germany had won World War II – but this time he imagines a new Middle Ages set 800 or so years in the future, after a 2020s Apocalypse caused by natural or man-made disasters or both. Unless you read the spoiler blurbs on the rear cover, it will take about 50 pages to get to the gist of the novel. Even then, Harris has many more secrets to reveal as he unpeels the onion. The theme isn't as speculative as all that, in reality. There is plenty of history to show that human progress can be halted or reversed: Witness the tearing down of Roman structures for building materials when civilization was overturned, or the death cult that causes millions of people to reject life-saving medicines.

V2

In my experience Robert Harris has never failed to deliver the goods, and V2 is no exception. It is a novelized account of the Nazi V2 rocket attacks against London during the closing months of World War II. Fictional characters rub shoulders with Wernher von Braun on the German side, while on the British side an officer of the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps experiences a V2 attack firsthand and later travels to Belgium as part of a team to try to locate launch sites in occupied Holland. Harris's formula is deceptively simple, yet seemingly no one else can carry it off with his élan: deep research, presented lightly, wrapped around a compelling narrative.

Animal

Several times while reading Lisa Taddeo's novel I thought to myself, "I'm not buying it." But while there was an artificiality to some of the scenes, I was able to take my judgment hat off and let the writer do her thing. It's a strange novel, but one that offers insights into the lives and thinking of women.

Maigret Gets Angry

In this 26th installment of the Maigret series by Georges Simenon, the detective chief inspector is retired and living peacefully but perhaps a bit restlessly in the country when an elderly woman bursts in on his idyll and demands he investigate a family matter. Jules can't resist, and the story proceeds to dissect human impulses driven by the third deadly sin, avarice. In the process, Simenon shows how bad behavior by the rich may be more disgusting than "ordinary" crimes.

I Am Not Sidney Poitier

When a novel is blurbed as a "comic masterpiece," it has a lot to live up to. The comic masterpieces I've read can be counted on one hand: Catch-22, A Confederacy of Dunces, The Loved One, and maybe a couple more. This novel by Percival Everett hardly qualifies, as it delivered one chuckle in 230 pages and consisted mostly of a half-assed picaresque quest to, ultimately, nowhere.

Assumption

Assumption, as I was told starting out a career in journalism, is the mother of all screw-ups. The assumption here is that the small-town sheriff's deputy in New Mexico who is the subject of the three stories that make up this novel is someone like James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux: flawed but decent, serious, a bit of an oddball. Percival Everett, the author, came to my attention when his novel Telephone appeared on a list of Pulitzer Prize nominees. As a stylist he is nothing to write home about, if this novel is any indication, but I'm on to a second work of his, I Am Not Sidney Poitier, with some interest.

The Great Days

This late novel by John Dos Passos, about a journalist past his prime recalling his glory days and trying for one more big story (in the company of a woman half his age), is keenly observed and wistful. Dos Passos, alchemist-like, turns his own experiences into an effective survey of World War II America as seen from the depths of the Cold War. The personalities and settings are colorful, described with the author's typical flair.

Mahler (1974)

Ken Russell combines intellect and imagination like no other film director. Mahler goes from earnest discussions of the meaning of his music to an outrageous slapstick sequence in which the composer converts to Christianity under the whip of dominatrix Cosima Wagner. Robert Powell, especially in profile, is a dead ringer for Gustav Mahler and convincingly captures his angst and ambitiousness. To what extent the story diverges from known biography is beside the point: the artist here is Russell, not Mahler, and his is a canvas full of bright colors always under threat from encroaching darkness.

The Human Comedy

William Saroyan's The Human Comedy demonstrates how simplicity and earnestness can pack a bigger punch than the cynicism and cleverness that was ascendant in American literature in the years after the novel was published in 1943. The writing calls to mind Sherwood Anderson or Steinbeck in its evocation of small-town characters, their hopes and their travails.

Third Helpings

It seems like food writing, and food television shows for that matter, have become much more precious since this Calvin Trillin book was published in 1983. It was a simpler time before the Food Network, "foodies," and Yelp. Trillin's essays have that rare quality of being simultaneously ingenuous and worldly-wise witty. At a clambake, an "oyster eat" in Deleware, a Reading, Pa., barroom or a Hong Kong market, Trillin's eyes and ears are always open. As is, of course, his mouth. 

Fatso (1980)

Fatso, written and directed by Anne Bancroft, got poor reviews on its release in 1980, but it deserves better. A tender story about an overweight man who finds love, it also hilariously takes advantage of the superb acting and physical talents of its star, Dom DeLuise. Bancroft excels in a manic supporting role, and Ron Carey is a perfect foil as DeLuise's brother, Junior. No one who has seen the film is likely to forget the line, "Get the honey, Junior," and the madcap scene it kicks off.

Floater

Calvin Trillin's 1980 novel, titled after a journalist who bounces from section to section at a national news weekly, might be the most accurate depiction of the types of people who inhabit a newsroom – or at least did during the early part of my career – I've ever read. The snark, sarcasm, plotting, nicknames, drinking and rumored office affairs are all played for laughs here but will strike home to anyone who worked at a newspaper in the 1980s.

Tepper Isn't Going Out

Calvin Trillin's Murray Tepper is a kind of Chauncey Gardiner from Kosinski's Being There: He sits in his car in Manhattan, legally parked and reading a newspaper, and people start to approach him for advice. The title refers to the fact that Tepper intends to stay parked for as long as he has paid the meter; when drivers notice him and ask if he is "going out," the answer is always no. These seem like slim reeds to support a novel, but Tepper is good-natured fun and doesn't need to be anything more. 

Runestruck

This 1977 Calvin Trillin novel has an entertaining cast of characters including a frantic mayor, a grease monkey country songwriter, and a smart-aleck newspaper editor. The discovery of a rune stone sets off an effort to prove that their Maine town was the landing spot for the Vikings. No belly laughs, but a nice diversion.

Uncivil Liberties

A volume of 40-year-old humor columns from the Nation is not a book that anyone would give high odds of being relevant and engaging, but Calvin Trillin's reflections on Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, parsimonious publishers and lesser subjects hit home with a decent batting average.

Messages from My Father

I would imagine that a writer has a hard time believing that whatever he chooses to investigate to write about may not be worth the effort. A real writer knows that he has something to say about almost anything. In this case, Calvin Trillin has taken his perfectly decent and hardworking father and written about him like he was extraordinary; it is a son's privilege to do such a thing, but is it a writer's? When Trillin points out that his father used the phrase "she's no spring chicken" there is a sense that we are meant to believe this was original to Abe Trillin, or at least that it is a striking idiom; of course it is fairly commonplace. There is nothing in the least wrong with having a commonplace father; I think the world would be a better place with more of them. But we don't necessarily need to read books about them.

Remembering Denny

Calvin Trillin's Remembering Denny reminded me, when I got to the last page, of Antonioni's The Passenger. Both have a similar quote along the lines of, "You didn't know him at all." Trillin traces the life of a Yale classmate in the 1950s who was a "golden boy" – winning smile, swimming star in high school, Rhodes Scholar, author on foreign relations – but who took his life in middle age. How much can we really know about people? Despite some digging and his clear-eyed intellect, Trillin approaches but does not fully explicate the personality and disappointments of Roger Hansen, known at Yale as Denny. On a side note, it is always a pleasure as a reader to be in the hands of a skilled writer, and Trillin's prose is sharp and crystalline.

Elegy for April

What is this? Humor in a Quirke story? How did that get in there? No matter, it's welcome, even if it is just a recurring punch line about Quirke's erratic driving after buying a fancy sports car. The underlying tale is grim as ever, but there seems to be a lot of padding as the plot develops.

Road to Volgograd

English novelist Alan Sillitoe's account of his trip to the Soviet Union in the spring of 1963, even discounting the benefits of hindsight, seems a little too credulous. He is fine when describing the vastness of Siberia, the giant hydroelectric and other building projects, the food and his theater experiences. The walking on eggshells about freedom of expression and Stalin, however, is telling.

A Small Town in Germany

John Le Carré's fifth novel, published in 1968, has resonances with today's politics in its depiction of a populist movement led by a demagogue threatening the established order in Germany. For the most part the book is a manhunt led by a rude and sometimes blundering but usually effective operative sent from London to track down a contract worker missing from the British Embassy in Bonn. For its skill in peeling an onion with countless layers before getting to the heart of the matter, A Small Town in Germany consistently entertains. Less effective is the rushed moralizing in the book's closing pages.

The Dead Zone (1983)

David Cronenberg's adaptation of a Stephen King novel is a lean, effective account of a man whose special power allows him to see into the past and future. There are some striking visual touches, although nothing as shocking as in, say, Scanners. The film is its own self-contained world where everything makes sense inside and there is no need for external interference. The highlight is the winning performance by Christopher Walken, who does as much here with an expression as other actors do with whole pages of dialogue. Martin Sheen's power-mad politician adds some hambone appeal.

Klara and the Sun

One question that occurred to me while reading this novel by Kazuo Ishiguro is whether or not it would have been published had it been submitted by an unknown author. I think it's a close call. There is certainly a lot to chew over in this tale told by an Artificial Friend that is full not of sound and fury signifying nothing but of gentleness and care signifying ... something. At a minimum it offers a homily on the value of close observation as a form of caring. Klara, the robot – although that word appears only twice in 300 pages – has been programmed to be a good companion by noticing the traits and needs of her human owners. We see the world through Klara's eyes, and maybe get a fresh lesson in how to be more genuine. 

Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)

Raindrops on the camera lens, fake blood that's too bright, looped dialogue that doesn't always sync – none of this matters compared to the success of this Werner Herzog film in depicting colonialism and the madness it produces. Klaus Kinski is mesmerizing as Aguirre, the ambitious and ruthless Spaniard whose lust for conquest never abates. As he says, if his team turns back, others will follow and gain all the glory (and gold). Herzog builds tension during the Europeans' rafting journey by showing only glimpses of the lurking Indians whose arrows pick off one explorer after another. The coda has to be seen to be believed, a glimpse into the utter darkness of the human soul.

The Silver Swan

This is the second installment in the Quirke mystery series by Benjamin Black, pen name of the Irish writer John Banville. Unfortunately, Quirke is becoming more melancholic, reticent, and frankly clueless. But fortunately, the pathologist takes a back seat in this book to some of the other players in the drama, who get whole chapters dedicated to their backgrounds and behaviors. Banville relentlessly pads the narrative with descriptions and similes, but for all the detail I still couldn't pick out any of these people from a lineup. Some authors are able to paint a vivid picture with just a few deft brushstrokes; Banville isn't one of them.

Straight Time (1978)

It's hard to imagine a film like Straight Time being made today. For one thing, the narrative is allowed to develop and breathe. In a backyard scene, for example, with Dustin Hoffman, Harry Dean Stanton and Rita Taggart, the camera is still and quiet as the actors do their naturalistic best in a long unbroken take. Hoffman has rarely been better, to my mind, than here playing a career criminal with a mean streak. It is a controlled, modulated and utterly convincing performance. There isn't a clunker in the cast, from Stanton and Taggart to a sinister M. Emmet Walsh, Gary Busey, and then-newcomer Theresa Russell. What also makes the film work is the lack of exposition and motivation: two elements that are among the most tiresome aspects of much current cinema.

Death in Venice (1971)

I watched Luchino Visconti's Death in Venice again recently, maybe for the fourth or fifth time, and was amazed anew at the visual language. When Aschenbach (Dirk Bogarde) enters the hotel's lounge on his first night in Venice, the camera picks him up almost accidentally, then follows him through the press of people until he finds a seat. The camera roams slowly, languidly, one might say luxuriantly, over the scene, until the boy Tadzio is revealed like a thunderbolt. This wandering eye is used throughout the film, making the viewer a kind of voyeur. It is also worth noting Visconti's effective use of a slow zoom, common in the 1970s but unaccountably gone today. The story itself, based on the Thomas Mann novella, seems to take a higher road than the source material, which I've read twice and in which I can find little more than an old man's lust for a young boy. Here, Tadzio resembles the photo of Aschenbach's young daughter that the composer kisses at the beginning of the film. We later learn she has died. The scenes with Alfred (an overheated Mark Burns) and Aschenbach are perhaps the film's weakest points, although they add some intellectual gloss. The music of Mahler and the photography make this a stunning film.

Eyes Wide Open

Screenwriter and novelist Frederic Raphael's book, subtitled "A Memoir of Stanley Kubrick," is a useful portrait of the collaborative process that led to Eyes Wide Shut. It is respectful to the director without being worshipful and seasoned with some fun stories from old Hollywood. 

One or Another

I was lured to this novel after seeing the painter, playwright and novelist Rosalyn Drexler on a 1970 episode of The Dick Cavett Show. One or Another is stylistically engaging, written in bursts of vignettes that more often than not go off on flights of fancy. The story is simple enough, about a 39-year-old New York woman married to a gym teacher who has an affair with one of his students. But this is a high-concept effort, much more than a simple plot summary would suggest. It is also appealingly frank. The imaginative mind here is impressive, but this novel is more self-expression than communication: a true painter's book.

The Shadow Over Innsmouth

Perhaps strange to be approaching 60 without ever having read any H.P. Lovecraft, but at least I can thank Michel Houellebecq's interest in the writer for directing me to this volume of short stories. There is a stylistic uniqueness to Lovecraft that is appealing: His sentences are chunky and sometimes clunky, but they match his subject matter to a tee in their weirdness. His only pure science fiction story, The Walls of Eryx, is effective in conveying a creeping sense of doom, and the title story concludes with a truly horrifying twist. All in all, this is a collection that will likely prod a new reader to seek out more from this strange writer.

What Unites Us

Dan Rather's optimistic account, subtitled "Reflections on Patriotism," is at its best when he draws on the experiences of his youth in Texas or his long career at CBS News. His interview with Medgar Evers and the tales of how neighbors pulled together during the Depression are highlights. At other times, however, he descends into platitudes.

Spring Snow

Yukio Mishima's Spring Snow, the first installment in a tetralogy called The Sea of Fertility, is filled with all the elements that make a novel both worthwhile and challenging. The writing is simply gorgeous, full of rich metaphors and descriptions of nature; the side trips into history and ideas such as Buddhism are fruitful; and the narrative itself is a classic form rendered with powerful effect. Every page has its moment of beauty, a staggering achievement. Here is just one, about the main character, Kiyoaki Matsugae: "He had never looked forward to the wisdom and other vaunted benefits of old age. Would he be able to die young – and if possible free of all pain? A graceful death – as a richly patterned kimono, thrown carelessly across a polished table, slides unobtrusively down into the darkness of the floor beneath. A death marked by elegance." 

The Book of Daniel

E.L. Doctorow found his voice in this, his third novel, published in 1971. The Book of Daniel places a family's destruction on a giant canvas – postwar Left politics – and achieves its ambitions with kaleidoscopic effects. The shifting narrative styles and digressions into subjects like Disneyland and the origins of the Cold War remind me of John Dos Passos's techniques in U.S.A., but they are done here not in imitation but in service of delineating the narrator's character. The novel casts a spell that is not easily resisted.

To Live and Die in L.A.

The source material for William Friedkin's 1985 neo-noir film, this novel by Gerald Petievich crackles along with period dialogue and a propulsive plot. Much of the investigative work is presented in an appealing no-nonsense style that reflects the author's time in the Secret Service. 

How to Write a Sentence

Stanley Fish provides some helpful insights into sentence-writing by focusing on form and exercises: Once you master a form with repeated exercises, you can make your own sentences with whatever content you wish. This is the nuts and bolts of good writing, and Fish's emphasis provides a useful antidote to more artsy-fartsy approaches.

Mourning Becomes Electra

Eugene O'Neill's 1931 play reminds me of the difficulties of producing an abstracted work in these times. At a performance I attended a few years ago of Verdi's Don Carlo, the conductor appeared on stage between acts to announce to the audience that they should not be laughing: The opera is a tragedy, and the laughter was disturbing the performers. I think the audience's problem in that case was part of the execrable critical approach that seeks to "identify with" a character. If you attempt to put yourself in the place of a king who is making grandiloquent statements, you may well laugh. But as Fran Lebowitz pointed out in a recent documentary, a novel (or play or opera, I would add) is not supposed to be a mirror but a door. I can only cringe at the thought of today's audiences chuckling at the overheated dialogue of O'Neill's masterful retelling of Greek myth.

The Looking Glass War

This novel, the follow-up to John Le Carré's wildly popular The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, was apparently a commercial dud, but it is in fact superior to its predecessor. The Looking Glass War reveals the spy business in all its sordidness. The base human traits of selfishness, ambition, and snobbery are on display in a mission that begins unraveling from the opening pages. Despite a series of failures, a froth of happy talk buoys the participants as they head toward a conclusion that is as sickening as it is inevitable.  

Welcome to Hard Times

E.L. Doctorow's first novel, published in 1960, might be called an anti-Western. It is unblinking in its depiction of the hardships of the frontier, in this case the Dakota Territory, including a chilling account (pun intended) of a brutal winter. Narrated by a character named "Blue," informally the mayor of Hard Times, the story has the usual Western cast of characters – prostitutes, storekeepers, drunkards – and a madman, the Man from Bodie, who literally destroys the town single-handedly in the first few pages. The town's effort to reconstitute itself forms the bulk of the novel, a project that Sisyphus would surely recognize.

The Spy Who Came In from the Cold

I had the advantage, or perhaps it was a disadvantage, of having seen the excellent Martin Ritt film of this novel several times before reading the book, so the trick of the story was not a surprise and I could see how the author dropped hints here and there leading up to the climax. Yet the book itself was still largely satisfying, with a good mixture of spycraft, philosophy, action, and romance.