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.