Mr. Clemens And Mark Twain – Justin Kaplan, 1966 ★★★½

Balancing a Man and a Myth

The central thesis of this critical biography is a tricky one laid out in its title, that being the dual identity of its celebrated subject. As author Justin Kaplan explains it, there were always two sides when dealing with Mark Twain.

He was an avowed atheist who took part in seances and embraced Christian Science, a celebrated voice of the South who lived in Connecticut, a critic of business who eagerly embraced the Industrial Age, a consummate insider who could never resist mocking authority.

“He wanted to belong, but he also wanted to laugh from the outside,” is how Kaplan puts it.

Mostly Harmless – Douglas Adams, 1992 ★★

Going Out with a Bang and a Whimper

Parallel universes and alternate timelines get quite a workout in this final installment of the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” comedic sci-fi saga. It begs a question: Can a series that always leaned hard on the utter randomness of the universe get too random?

Short answer: Yes.

Mostly Harmless is the most frenetic, depressing, and conceptually catawampus entry in the series. It delivers that boldly anarchic flavor “Hitchhiker” faithful have savored for decades. Where it falls short is tone; an uncharacteristic despairing heaviness pervades the text. For the first time, Adams’s universe is suffused not with whimsy but dread.

The American Way – George S. Kaufman & Moss Hart, 1939 ★

Letting Freedom Ring...a Bit Tinnily

Sometimes a work of art tries too hard to say all the right things, only to beat its points to the point of banality. Such is the fate of this drama meant to prepare the country for the start of World War II.

A historically significant but dramatically leaden presentation of the national experience over 43 years, “The American Way” is a departure for playwrights George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart in its deadly earnestness. Almost bereft of humor, it pivots from flag-waver to tragedy without giving an audience a chance to catch their breaths.

The Beautiful And Damned – F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1922 ★★½

Casualties at Dawn

The second F. Scott Fitzgerald novel sounds many of the themes as the first, only with greater emphasis on the negative. Youth and beauty fade, wealth is lost, status slips and the mind becomes muddled by wasted opportunity. What is left is something of a fizzle, if a brilliant one.

The weirdest thing about this book is its copyright date. It seems to take in the whole of the Jazz Age. But unlike the later Fitzgerald short story “Babylon Revisited.” which also depicts the ruin of a similarly tragic couple, The Beautiful And Damned was published near the dawn of the Roaring Twenties, not after its end.

Fitzgerald had a prescient view of where the country was going, as well as his own famous marriage to Zelda Sayre. If only he had a plot!

Ninety-Two Days – Evelyn Waugh, 1934 ★★★½

Postcards from the Edge

Evelyn Waugh’s travel writings offer such a litany of complaint that by his third expedition one suspects he was just in it for the grousing. But despite a characteristic whinging tone, Ninety-Two Days evolves into a delightful if somewhat broody trudge through the tropics. Waugh’s gift for word portraiture was never better.

The lands being visited here were the most distant yet for Waugh, the colony of British Guiana and a vast neighboring section of northern Brazil. Hot weather, bad roads, awful food, leaky roofs, frenzied insects, and an ever-present sense of torpor were just some of the tortures Waugh endured for his readers.

He is not shy about his suffering. “There are a hundred excellent reasons for rough travelling, but good living is not one of them,” he writes.

Write If You Get Work: The Best Of Bob & Ray – Bob Elliott & Ray Goulding, 1975 ★★★

Dipping into the Surreal

For over forty years, two men who dressed like Rotarians and rarely raised their voices conducted a quiet comedy revolution. Today, the legacy of Bob & Ray rests in hundreds of circulated radio recordings, fond memories of aging fans, and out-of-print books like this which collect their sketches.

I wanted Write If You Get Work: The Best Of Bob & Ray to justify my love with page after page of sheer laughter. Despite my deep nostalgia, I can’t claim this to be all that gut-busting. What it does is capture the essence of what they did, a slightly surreal, lightly barbed whimsy that marked them for decades as the gentlest and wittiest of media satirists.

Lullaby – Ed McBain, 1989 ★★★

Pushing it to 11

There are times when a novel by a favorite author has what you want and expect to the point it becomes a liability. Passion and energy are revved up to an overheated degree. Fast-paced conversations read like boxing matches. A super-heavy mood looms large.

Lullaby is a fantastically developed and fleshed-out dive into the world of Ed McBain’s legendary 87^th Precinct. It would no doubt have read better if it had been shorter. Alas, what makes it so brilliant a read also holds it back. The author is on such a tear he knows not when to stop.

A couple return to their Isola apartment from a New Year’s Eve party to discover the corpses of both their infant daughter and her teenaged babysitter. At first, a burglar is suspected. Further investigation suggests a more personal motive. But which victim was the target?