March Violets

March Violets, set in 1936, is the first book in Philip Kerr's Berlin Noir series. The plots of the best writers of detective fiction, Chandler and Ross Macdonald for two, tend to lose me about halfway through, but the story isn't really the point. Like those predecessors, Kerr weaves a tangled tale while excelling in atmosphere, characterizations, and similes -- although some of the similes are head-scratchers. The whiff of anxiety and menace in Hitler's Berlin as the Olympics approach is ever-present, reinforced by Kerr's careful detail work on places, people, and society.

Alfred A. Knopf: Quarter Century

This slim volume, published in 1940 by friends of the publisher Alfred A. Knopf, contains tributes from H.L. Mencken, Willa Cather, and others on the occasion of Knopf's 25 years of publishing. The best summary of Knopf's contribution probably comes from fellow publisher B.W. Huebsch, who writes: "A creative publisher ... wakes the public to what it has been missing; he waits for no cue from readers, he gives it." Knopf's achievement in bringing seven Nobelists, including Thomas Mann and Knut Hamsun, to the American public would be enough for any publisher, but he also insisted on making lasting books of quality and superb design. And I cannot recall ever having found a typographical error in a Knopf book from the teens, 20s, or 30s.

Solar

To judge from this novel, Ian McEwan is a fraud. The character of Michael Beard, the scientist protagonist, is utterly false. It is impossible to regard him as anything other than a novelistic invention. None of his sentences, or actions, ring true, and although McEwan acknowledges scientists who helped him with the photovoltaic aspects, even those sound as though written by a half-assed student trying to bluff his way through an exam. I liked On Chesil Beach, although the characters there weren't entirely believable either, and Saturday built to an excellent climax. But this one has an air of preciousness and a stink of falsity that will not dissipate.

In My Father's Shadow

William Faulkner, responding to his daughter's disappointment that he had missed an important (to her) birthday party, snapped that no one remembers Shakespeare's daughter. Orson Welles's daughter, whom he named Christopher in the womb, had a similarly difficult time catching the attention of her famous father. A memoir like this needs two things at least: great anecdotes and previously unseen family photos. Chris Welles Feder delivers on the second and tries hard at the first, but the fact is that Orson Welles was too busy to give his firstborn much of his time. He moved on to other marriages, other continents, new projects. Welles Feder gives little insight into her father's filmmaking but adds some facts around the margins, such as that Welles despised being praised for Citizen Kane and thought Chimes at Midnight was his best film.

Out of Sheer Rage

Geoff Dyer's book on D.H. Lawrence is one-half Lawrence, one-half Dyer. He is just about incapable of writing a bad sentence, and his adventures (mostly misadventures) on the trail of Lawrence are funny and entertaining, throwing off sparks of enlightenment here and there. In a brilliant stroke, the book plunges into Lawrence's letters and travel writing, ignoring the novels. I will read anything by Dyer, no matter the subject, knowing full well that at least half of the subject will be Dyer himself. A recent Nation article complains about this aspect of his writing, saying he has written only one "first-rate" book and that his last novel was "over-praised." But you keep reading them, right?

Good Bad Writing

A couple of submissions to Britain's Spectator, which asked for "toe-curlingly" bad analogies:

"The main course was as sinful as if loin chops cut from the Beast of the Apocalypse had been marinated in ambrosia and then flambeed over the fires of Hell itself."

"Watching this film is like snuggling amorously down into a warm four-poster and then finding that the other occupant is the unwrapped mummy of Rameses II."

What Paul Meant

By stripping away centuries of varnish applied to Paul's letters, and by discarding the false ones, Garry Wills reveals an apostle who hardly merits being called a "corrupter" (Jefferson) with a "genius for hatred" (Nietzche). What Paul meant, Wills shows, is what Jesus meant: that love is the only law.

The Loser

Thomas Bernhard's triangular character study includes an unnamed narrator, a fictionalized Glenn Gould, and the loser of the title. The three are pianists, but only Gould succeeds in becoming a piano artist. The loser kills himself, and the narrator writes endlessly about Gould. Stylistically, the novel thrums with repetitions, bald sincerity, and blazing judgments. On Page 1, the narrator steps toward an Austrian inn; by Page 100 he is barely inside, the intervening 10 seconds having been stuffed with surreal characterizations. The final 99 percent of the book consists of a single paragraph, or perhaps more accurately, no paragraphs. The reader may tire of Bernhard's rashness in expressing his loves and (many more) hates, but the author does not permit attention to flag.

What the Gospels Meant

Garry Wills's choice of tense is instructive: He is not explaining what the Gospels might mean to us today; he is excavating the writers' purposes. He translates the original Greek himself, clearing away centuries of holy smoke clouding the original intent. Even the Lord's Prayer looks fresh as taken apart by Wills, who writes with scholarship, clarity, and brevity.

Room at the Top

The theme of a young man on the make had already been done better by Thackeray and Dreiser when this novel by John Braine was published in 1957, but Braine succeeds as an agreeable stylist with a sharp eye for the details of human behavior. The dated rendering of some of the dialogue into overblown, faux adult flirting can be excused given the novel's timelessness in other aspects, such as demonstrating the eternal and related pulls of greed and love.