Scoop – Evelyn Waugh, 1938 ★★

Fleet Street Follies

When it came to media bashing, Evelyn Waugh got his licks in early and often. Scoop is his acid take on the artful folly of foreign correspondents competing for the big story, not really caring if it isn’t there.

Based on his recent experience as a war correspondent covering the 1935 Italian invasion of Ethiopia (then known as Abyssinia), Waugh presents Ishmaelia, an East African land of no cultural or material importance. Here is sent, completely by accident, one William Boot, nature correspondent for the Beast.

Can this gormless rustic bumpkin accustomed to writing about great-crested grebes possibly land the big story? To quote Mr. Salter, a toady to the Beast’s overbearing publisher Lord Copper, “Up to a point.”

Green Hills Of Africa – Ernest Hemingway, 1935 ★★½

The Hangover Strikes

The 1920s gave us Hemingway’s legacy, the 1930s left us the legend. Green Hills Of Africa is how that legend is often remembered, opinionated, self-glorifying, often a mean drunk toting a loaded gun.

How much you enjoy this travel/hunting memoir depends on your tolerance for its brilliant but often solipsistic prose. Sure, there are quotes aplenty, but also a reason for seeing in it the beginning of serious decline.

For one thing, the man was beginning to let himself go:

The Frumious Bandersnatch – Ed McBain, 2004 ★★

Late McBain Leaves Bitter Taste

Pop music has always been a rough business, but how about this: a young singer’s major-label debut is transformed into a violent kidnapping. Despite the Lewis Carroll-inspired title, this is one of the grimmest and edgiest 87^th Precinct novels Ed McBain ever penned.

Did he go too far this time?

I think so, though I didn’t hate this one as much on a second read. It has a clever, suspenseful plot once it gets going and offers some memorable highlights. It’s just that McBain’s increasingly bleak outlook and his willingness to indulge himself too much on matters away from the main story make this one tough to like.

Gettysburg – Stephen W. Sears, 2003 ★★★★½

Teaching Lee Humility

It began a brazen demonstration of contempt and wound up a history-altering mistake. In between, over three days, came intense carnage. Still, who won Gettysburg was not decided immediately; much of the how and why parts of the battle are still being debated.

Today we see Gettysburg as the turning point in the bloodiest of American wars. Back then, concrete conclusions were harder to reach. Stephen W. Sears offers readers something the people who fought at Gettysburg didn’t have: clarity.

For the Confederates, what was at stake was clear enough. They needed to stay on the attack and put the fight to the North. The commander of their Army of Northern Virginia, Robert E. Lee, put it so: “There is always hazard in military movements, but we must decide between the positive loss of inactivity and the risk of action.”

The Mysterious Island – Jules Verne, 1874 ★½

What a Setting, Shame about the Plot

Do you like novels where character development, subjective perspectives, and multi-layered narratives are replaced by detailed explanations about how metallurgy and explosives work?

Do you want a main protagonist who doubles as a pontificator on the meaning of life, liberty, and everything else?

Do you enjoy big reveals featuring inexplicable interventions by characters from other novels that shut down storylines just as they begin to get exciting?

Jules Verne was a celebrated literary pioneer whose fantastic visions still enchant readers, but what grabs you about this legendary example of his prodigious output is a total stiffness in characters and plot.

The Man Who Came To Dinner – George S. Kaufman & Moss Hart, 1939 ★★½

Rudeness is Its own Reward

Let no one claim the class system was confined to other parts of the world: The Man Who Came To Dinner shows it in full effect here in America. A media celebrity takes over the house of an Ohio family, throwing them into chaos. But never mind them; the celebrity and his friends are all that matters.

A successful screwball comedy by the team of George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, The Man Who Came To Dinner was a long-running hit on Broadway and a popular movie starring Monty Woolley and Bette Davis. Unlike Kaufman and Hart’s even bigger earlier comedy, You Can’t Take It With You, this offers an inventive plot, some wicked one-liners, and a lead character right out of Falstaff.

But as the play rolls along, it plays up the patrician sensibilities of its authors in a smug, hard-to-take way. Kaufman and Hart seem to think if they enjoy rubbing elbows with the like of Noel Coward and Harpo Marx, so should you. Meanwhile, if you are like me, you may find a little of Sheridan Whiteside winds up more than enough.

Troilus And Criseyde – Geoffrey Chaucer, c. 1382-1387 [Translation by Nevill Coghill, 1971] ★★★★½

Love's Misfortune, Straddling Time

It’s a case of being almost too enjoyable to read without drawing some guilt. This is Chaucer, yet a boldly modern translation that lays out medieval psychology and customs in a smooth way while delivering a crackling good story. If only it felt less easy going down.

Nevill Coghill’s translation leans into the modern idiom, recasting the 14^th century narrative poem with some 20^th century expressions like “Nuts” and “that makes them tick.” At the same time, the poem’s rhythms and expressive discourse are recognizably direct from Chaucer, here coming into full form as the premier English writer of his time.

The bones of the poem remain: In ancient Troy a hero named Troilus and a widow maiden named Criseyde fall in love while their city is besieged by angry Greeks. After a period of pursuit and apparent despair by Troilus, the two achieve a blissfully erotic union only to find their romance becoming another victim of war.