Pun Salad

Over the years, I've read a lot of praise for this book. Certainly George Will has plugged it a lot in his WaPo column. And the University Near Here actually owns a couple copies, from back in the days when they bought physical books. Specifically, I checked out a refurbished paperback from them.

That praise continues on the back cover. "One of the funniest American novels in three decades"; "A delight of true understanding"; "Satirical virtuosity like nothing since Oscar Wilde"; "One of the wittiest books of modern times"; and more in that vein.

Maybe I'm going through a cranky patch, but I didn't find a lot of amusement. As usual: it's best to assume that's my fault, not the book's. You can read a long excerpt here; see if you crack a smile.

I noticed a few literary references. This probably means a lot more whizzed by without me noticing.

It's from 1954, which makes it nearly as old as I am. The author, Randall Jarrell, was an honored poet, teacher, and literary critic. Unfortunately, he fell into mental illness, attempted suicide, and died in 1965 when hit by a car. The NYT obituary is ambiguous about whether it was an accident or (successful) suicide.

Nothing much actually happens in the book: it's an exploration of the various characters the anonymous narrator meets while teaching at the fictional Benton College. They are a quirky and fractious bunch, full of self-importance, but also insecurity.

I sat up and took notice when a line of poetry is quoted from one character to another: "We must love one another or die." The response was to suggest instead: "We must love one another and die."

The poem is unidentified in the book, but it's easy to Google: it is Auden's "September 1, 1939". But apparently Auden himself later preferred the "and" replacement.

I doubt that New Hampshire is going to change its motto to "Live Free and Die". I briefly considered vandalizing my car's license plates to read that way, though. More subtle commentary than George Maynard's!

Confession: I did smile at this, the narrator's report from the college's "Art Night":

Miss Rasmussen began to tell Gottfried and me about her statues. Some of what she said was technical and you would have had to be a welder to appreciate it; the rest was aesthetic or generally philosophic, and to appreciate it you would have had to be an imbecile.

Zing! But, to be fair, the narrator adjusts his estimation of Miss Rasmussen at the very end of the book.

I've been on an unlucky streak with fiction lately, finding four recently-read novels mediocre or worse, and I'm struggling with a fifth. But I thought this book by Jonathan Turley (lawyer, pundit, lawprof at George Washington U.) was excellent. He makes a powerful argument for a broad, natural-rights interpretation of freedom of speech.

This more or less corresponded to my own view when I started reading the book. But Turley managed to deepen my understanding, and alter my opinions slightly, not just confirm my priors.

It's commonplace to observe that today is not a great time for free speech. But guess what: Turley's history (detailed and interesting) shows that it never has been a time when the right to speak your mind has been without peril, legal and otherwise. There's a quick overview of ancient abuses (too bad, Socrates), an examination of English jurisprudence (also spotty at best), and then we are on to the American experience. He relates various instances of how "rage" has driven harsh words and actions from the citizenry, followed by, all too often, rage-driven overreaction from governmental officials.

Every American schoolkid learns about John Adams' Alien and Sedition Acts. But Turley goes deeper, revealing (for instance) that Thomas Jefferson sometimes succumbed to the temptations of prosecuting and persecuting free-speakers.

Turley shows the problem over the centuries (and continuing today) is the "functionalist" view of free speech, which views it as a tool, just one tool, in producing desirable outcomes. Those who hold to this position unfortunately see it not as an absolute bright red line prohibiting government intrusion, but subject to trade-offs and compromise.

The most common tradeoff is seen in the concept of sedition, when speech challenges the authority of the state. It's one of the classic gotchas: the people whose authority you are calling into question are the same people who get to decide whether to punish your uppityness. James Madison, one of Turley's heroes, called Adams' anti-sedition legislation "a monster that must forever disgrace its parents."

Turley is in favor of "slaying Madison's monster" by putting seditious words on the "protected" side of the First Amendment. This is a bold stand, as the government finds it useful for prosecution even today. PBS story from 2022: Oath Keepers founder guilty of seditious conspiracy in Jan. 6 case.

Speaking of January 6, Turley makes a compelling case that what happened that day was a riot, not an "insurrection". There was plenty of legal room to prosecute the participants for their violent and obstructive acts, without regard to their speech. He's equally horrified by the abortive efforts to prosecute Donald Trump for "incitement", and to disqualify his 2024 candidacy on 14th Amendment grounds. That's an uncommon argument, and he moved my own view quite a ways toward his own.

Nick Gillespie on the Reason Roundtable podcast raved about this book. The inner flap assured me it was "an original and hilarious satire of our political culture and those who rage against it." The back cover blurbs (one from Jim Carrey!) contain words like "exquisitely wicked"; "dangerous sense of humor"; "so funny, so clever, so alive"; "hysterical"; "smart, hilarious, and audacious"; and "Infuriating, perverse, contrarian, scandalous; nihilistic, and very, very funny."

And I'm pretty sure I didn't even crack a smile the entire way through.

It's probably me. Who am I to tell Jim Carrey and those other folks what's funny? Your mileage may vary, and probably will.

The first-person narrator is Anna, a New York writer who's in professional turmoil because her novel about opioid addiction in Appalachia has been reamed by the NYT for being classist. At loose ends, she falls in with an Objectivist walking tour of Ayn Rand-relevant Manhattan locales. And resolves to head out to Los Angeles to write a movie about Rand. Or maybe a sitcom. Or perhaps an animation. When things fall through, she skips back to New York to deal with a family death. But then its off to the isle of Lesbos, where there's communal meditation and lecturing under the eye of the Master. And there's also this hot guy who is obsessed with a YouTube compilation of Tom Cruise running scenes.

At one point Anna witnesses:

I found myself standing at the kitchen island with a group of Big Boy's friends. They all looked about twenty-five and had quiet, doting girlfriends who all looked about nineteen. Within the group, the boys were telling jokes, or rather giving micro-performances in response to verbal stimuli.

I liked that well enough to stick a post-it to the page so I could quote it here. But only because it reminded me of what the author, Lexi Freiman seemed to be doing: telling "jokes", or rather writing a series of prose performances in response to critical stimuli. I looked in vain for humor.

This book was nominated for a 'Best Novel' Edgar in 2023. And Amazon has it as an "Editors' Pick" in the "Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense" category. And the back cover has fulsome praise from S.A. Cosby and seven other people.

And yet, I was repulsed. Too much disgusting gore and horror, some supernatural, all evil. If that's your bag, go ahead. Otherwise…

The narrator, Mario, is deep in debt due to his beloved daughter's daunting medical bills. So he does what any of us might do: signs up as a hit man, shooting people in the head for money. Surprisingly, this does not save his marriage, thanks to the "accidental" mayhem he visits on his wife. And (page 22 spoiler) his daughter dies anyway. And I guess life is cheap in Mario's world, because even after killing a bunch of people, he's still getting pestered by his creditors.

Tip: when hiring yourself out as an assassin, find out what the opportunities are for professional advancement.

Salvation beckons when he's asked to join up with a gang looking to rip off a shipment of cash from a Mexican drug cartel. His cut will be $200K, which he imagines will get him out of debt, get his wife back, basically solve all his problems. His teammates are a meth junkie, Brian, and a mysterious Hispanic, Juanca.

Mario does not wonder why such an important role in the scheme is being played by pathetic losers like him. He eventually finds out, though.

I should also mention, as a consumer note, that there's quite a bit of untranslated Spanish in the book. I didn't resort to Google Translate for anything, and … did I miss anything? I guess I will never know.

The penultimate book on my "reread Heinlein" project! One to go!

It's from 1985, and my very beat-up copy says I shelled out $16.20 for the hardcover to Barnes & Noble back then. I'm pretty sure I read it once back then, and never again until now. I think it's safe to say it's for Heinlein fans only.

It kicks off with a (literal) bang, as a stranger accosts the narrator, Colonel Colin Campbell, in a restaurant. He wants Campbell to kill a guy. "But Tolliver must die by noon Sunday or we'll all be dead!" And mere seconds later the stranger is shot dead himself by an unknown assassin!

That's on the second page of the book's first chapter.

This sets Campbell off on a wild adventure, accompanied by a lady he knows as "Gwen Novak". For some reason, they find themselves in danger of assassination themselves, as a host of baddies attempt to thwart their mission. A mission that Campbell doesn't know exists until much later.

I said this was for Heinlein fans only. Without spoilers: it turns out to (kinda) rely on knowledge of Heinlein's ouvré.

In addition, readers will have to put up with a lot of Heinlein-style banter, incessant references to boinking, and rambling first-person narration, all turned up to eleven.

I found the ending to be unsatisfying, but … you know, Heinlein paid his dues, and at this stage of his life, was entitled to write what he wanted.

This was on the Wall Street Journal's list of best 2024 mysteries. So, despite my mediocre impressions of the two previous books I've read by Joël Dicker, I decided to give this one a try. This book is a sequel of sorts to The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair, which I read back in 2014, and (apparently) The Baltimore Boys (which I haven't read).

This book is set mostly in New Hampshire, with side trips to Maine and Massachusetts. Locations are a mixture of the fictional and real: Conway, Wolfeboro, Rochester, etc. (The "dangerous part of Rochester" earns a visit; I didn't even know Rochester had a "dangerous part", but I haven't been everywhere in the city.)

The "affair" is the grisly murder of the titular Alaska Sanders in 1999. She was pretty, a beauty pageant winner, an aspiring model/actress, but things don't work out: our first view of her is being a corpse on a lakeshore, being eaten by a bear.

Things get resolved quickly: one suspect is shot, another confesses and goes to prison for life. Swift New Hampshire justice!

Over a decade later, the book's narrator, author Marcus Goldman, visits the murder scene, and reunites with his cop buddy, Perry Galhalowood. But there's this one little detail unearthed that causes the murder investigation to be reopened, and we are off into a very twisty plot.

So thumbs up for the plot, which (I assume) is hole-free. That's a Dicker trademark. Also (as I've noted in the past): leaden, unrealistic dialog, plastic characters, soap-opera scenarios. As Marcus and Perry proceed, startling revelations pile up, each sending their attention in a different direction, to new suspects. ("Why didn't you tell us this before now?" seems to be said a lot.) I followed along.

I know: it's fiction. However, at a certain point the plot twists seemed too-conveniently contrived. There's a limit. By the end, my page-turning was driven by a mixture of "Sigh, what's gonna happen now?" and "Let's get this over with."

One NH-based plot point struck me: a murder confession is coerced by a threatened death penalty. But (in actual fact) New Hampshire has not executed a murderer since 1939. (Want to know more about Capital punishment in New Hampshire?) I thought this was an obvious botch by Dicker, but guess what? No spoilers, but by the end of the book I realized—maybe not!

The author, historian Victor Davis Hanson, tells the story of how four civilizations were destroyed via wartime destruction of their cities: (1) Thebes, by the Macedonians in 335BC; (2) Carthage, by Romans, 149-146 BC; (3) Byzantine Constantinople, by Ottomans, in 1453; (4) Aztec Tenochtitlán, by the Spaniards, in 1521.

Those were blood-soaked times indeed! Hanson goes into meticulous detail describing each scenario, how the doomed societies were perceived by their conquerors, the tactics used, the resulting death and slavery.

Although widely separated in time and space, these four examples allow Hanson to draw some sobering common themes in his epilogue "How the Unimaginable Becomes the Inevitable". (1) The victims naïvely hoped for outside help, which failed to arrive; (2) They were not simply naïve, but also overconfident in their own defenses; (3) They were weakened somewhat by internal disagreements; (4) They were unrealistic about the capabilities of their opponents; (5) They tried to come to "understandings" with their enemies, which eventually fell apart; (6) Eventually, the losing side resorted to their own savage tactics, fruitlessly (but bloodily) trying to avoid annihilation.

Hanson is no Steven Pinker-style optimist, drawing hope from The Better Angels of our Nature. Also in that epilogue, he runs down a list present-day potential/actual hotspots, some obvious (Ukraine, Taiwan, Korea) and others less so (Turkey vs. Greece?)

I was impressed by VDH's scholarship; since I am not even at a dilettante-level student of history, I'm easily impressed. His style is a little dry. And not getting all hippy-dippy on you, but I was struck by the massive waste of human life and wealth that went into wars, on both sides. Especially that Thebes chapter; what the heck were they fighting about? Can't they all just get along? It's as if Omaha suddenly decided to conquer and destroy Des Moines!

The latest adventure of private eye Elvis Cole and his partner/force of nature Joe Pike. It has been slightly over two years since the previous book; I hope this means Robert Crais is writing these books as the mood strikes him, and not under pressure from his publisher or agent to grind out schlock. This is schlock-free.

Elvis is hired by Traci Beller to find out what happened to her beloved father, who vanished ten years previous when she was 13. A previous effort by another detective turned up nothing except his last known whereabouts, the small (fictional) town of Rancha, out at the western end of the San Fernando Valley. (I assume that's what the book's title refers to; Google Maps doesn't show much out there.)

Money's no object, because Traci is a bona fide star in the world of Internet muffin-baking ("eight-point-two-million followers across her socials"), with potential to become a superstar. Her muffins are great, and she has a winning personality that translates to video well. But she's kinda obsessed with wanting to know what happened ten years ago. Elvis takes the case, but has to contend with Traci's posse (who don't care what happened to Dad, and want to stay on the gravy train) and Traci's mother, who (seemingly) would prefer Traci just Move On.

Elvis contends with more resistance out in Rancha, where his diligent investigation draws the attention of unsavory types who really don't want the truth about Traci's dad to be revealed. Things escalate to the point where Joe Pike is called to assist, but (unfortunately) too late to protect Elvis from some serious violence.

Bottom line: I can't think of any current writer who does the private-eye genre better than Robert Crais, and this is no exception.

This was the Raymond Chandler estate's first effort at making some money off an author who'd been dead for 30 years. It is (however) an honest co-authorship: Chandler wrote the first four chapters, while Robert B. Parker ably supplied the final 37. I try to ignore the inherent profit-driven ghoulishness, and instead concentrate on the pleasures of finding out what Philip Marlowe is up to.

What he's up to, at first, is settling into marriage with Linda Marlowe, née Loring, out in the tony desert town of Poodle Springs. Linda's daddy is rich, and so is she. Marlowe, on the other hand, is relatively poor, and wants to continue making his honest living doing what he knows: being a private detective, going down those famed mean streets, assuming he can find any of those in Poodle Springs. This is a continuing source of friction in their marriage. Like throughout the book, a continuing bone of contention that seems unresolvable.

Soon enough, Marlowe gets a client: Manny Lipshultz, who operates a gambling den outside the city limits. He has accepted an IOU from a shady photographer, Les Valentine, in the amount of $100,000. But now Valentine has vanished, and Lipshultz is worried that the casino's (anonymous) owner will find out and be irate.

From there on out, the plot gets complicated, and eventually homicidal.

I bought and read this in hardcover when it came out in 1989, being a fan of both Chandler and Parker. I think I liked it better on the re-read, about 35 years later. Parker got Marlowe pretty much right, although there are definite notes of Spenser in the wisecracks. (It may be heresy to say this, but: Parker's Spenser was always funnier than Chandler's Marlowe.)

I notice that HBO made a movie based on the book, with James Caan playing Marlowe. I didn't know that. I'll see if it's streamable!

The latest Reacher novel from the Childs. (Children?) And, again, they have succeeded in separating me from $14.99 (Kindle version).

The beginning is pretty gripping: Reacher regains consciousness to find that he's been cuffed to a metal table, hands and feet. Worse, one arm is broken, and he's slightly concussed. Even worse, he has no memory of how he got into this predicament.

Since he's Reacher, he quickly outwits one of his captors and frees himself. But only to be plunged into a devious criminal conspiracy. It turns out he had accepted a car ride from one of the conspirators, only to wind up in a nasty accident on twisty Ozark road, which killed the driver. So now what? Well, of course: pretend to be a willing accomplice in the criminal activities, and…

I admit: I got about halfway through the book and said: Oh oh, I have no idea what's going on here. It may be my age. But, gee, the plot is as twisty as that Ozark road, and new characters keep showing up, all the characters are liars, and… well, I started over from page one, and finally made it through. And it eventually made sense, although I didn't think about it too hard. I even managed to figure out one of the Big Plot Twists before Reacher does. (Or at least, I figured it out before Reacher mentioned it.)

Bottom line: another enjoyable Reacher outing. But you might want to take notes along the way Pay special attention to the activities at the crash scene.