Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine – Tom Wolfe, 1976 ★½

Wolfe at Play

It takes a brilliant writer to write as badly as Tom Wolfe. The author of such far-out titles as The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby decided to go all out with a title that makes even less sense when you trouble yourself to read the book.

Just what in hell is Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine supposed to mean, anyway?

It's not even catchy. Now, Mau-Mauing The Flak Catchers, that was a pretty opaque title, too, but at least you didn't have to read it off the page to say it properly.

Killing Lincoln – Bill O'Reilly & Martin Dugard, 2011 ★★½

Sic Semper Something-or-other

Does a work of popular history actually impede one's deeper understanding of the past? One might think so from the hoopla surrounding the original release of Killing Lincoln.

Across America, historians blasted Killing Lincoln for being a poorly-researched font of disinformation. Museum gift shops that sell Honest Abe coloring books determined it to be beneath their standards. The deputy superintendent of the Ford's Theatre National Historic Site in Washington, D. C. cited numerous errors and a lack of footnotes in recommending Killing Lincoln be kept off its book store shelves as a disservice to Lincoln's memory.

Meanwhile, the actual murder weapon used for killing Lincoln is on display at Ford's Theatre, under glass.

Titus Andronicus – William Shakespeare, 1592-94 ★★½

Death by Shakespeare

Titus Andronicus presents us with one lasting and undeniable truth, that commercial success doesn't translate into critical accomplishment.

Said to have been the first big hit in the career of playwright William Shakespeare, it had already been staged by three different performance companies within two years of its apparent debut. Yet it's rarely staged now, and when it is it's presented more in the form of post-modern irony than as gripping drama.

The reason for that is simple: Titus is not a good play. But as a revenge fantasy with a strangely pungent sense of cosmic injustice, it kind of, sort of works.

Frank: The Voice – James Kaplan, 2010 ★★★★

Sinatra: Lust for Glory

If you someday find yourself at a buffet table in Heaven and Frank Sinatra happens to cut in front of you for seconds, you'll know two things from reading James Kaplan's Frank: The Voice.

1) It is useless to complain. 2) Don't even think about taking your place back.

Sinatra in The Voice is an extremely narcissistic, selfish, cold-blooded, tyrannical womanizer for whom the word no was only a slower version of the word yes.

The Return Of The King - J. R. R. Tolkien, 1955 ★★★★½

Closing the Ring

The last of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord Of The Rings trilogy, Return Of The King strikes me as one of the great payoff books in Western literature. It may not be a perfect novel, yet it rewards the investment paid by the reader of prior LOTR installments, deepens and broadens the insights one gleaned from reading the other books, and, unless you are a goblin or troll, sends you away happy.

The Two Towers – J. R. R. Tolkien, 1954 ★★★

The Murky Middle

Any great trilogy would seem to require a strong middle piece, something that deepens one’s engagement with the material being explored.

So I’m struck at how J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord Of The Rings trilogy manages to be so spell-binding despite the murky muddle of a middle piece that is The Two Towers.

The Fellowship Of The Ring – J. R. R. Tolkien, 1954 ★★★★

One Ring to Rule Them All

The first book in J. R. R. Tolkien's epic trilogy makes for a fine scene-setter and a bit of a puzzler. 

Enormously different in tone and content from his earlier novel set in Middle Earth, The Hobbit, The Fellowship Of The Ring challenges you to read closely and pay attention. It often rewards you for the effort, but make no mistake, this ain't no pleasant Misty Mountain hop.

The Hobbit – J. R. R. Tolkien, 1937 ★★★★

A Tall Tale that Gets Bigger and Bigger

A quaint, bucolic story about a little fellow who meets with big adventures, The Hobbit is the kind of book one expects to read to a young person over the course of several lazy Sunday afternoons. Is anyone else surprised it became the foundation stone for one of modern culture's most popular mythologies?

What struck me recently reading The Hobbit was the small-ball stuff, its readability and charm. Yes, its greatest legacy by far lies with it being the forerunner of fantasy fiction's greatest trilogy, a trilogy that does much more than The Hobbit giving life and breadth to its fantasy setting of Middle Earth. But what strikes me is not how meticulous a myth-maker author J. R. R. Tolkien was, but how instinctual his pacing and craft seemed to be.

Harvest Home – Thomas Tryon, 1973 ★★★

Hawthorny Horror Tale

It's the Season of the Witch, the month of Halloween, and I was in the mood for some seasonal fiction. Rather than try something new, I opted for something I knew already, or thought I knew, Thomas Tryon's Harvest Home.

It turned out less than I hoped, specifically in the story and scares departments, but impressed me nevertheless as the work of a solid literary craftsman.

The Keys Of The Kingdom – A. J. Cronin, 1941 ★★½

Inheriting the Earth 

Sometimes you want to believe in something so bad it doesn't really matter if the message is a bit off. A famous novel made into a successful film starring Gregory Peck, The Keys Of The Kingdom presents an admirable message and a saintly protagonist.

But I found the story off.

License Renewed – John Gardner, 1981 ★★½

007 Greets the 1980s

I remember my excitement seeing the blurb in Time magazine back in 1981. Glidrose Publications, Ltd., owners of the literary copyright of the world's most famous fictional spy, had granted permission for a brand-new series of James Bond novels.

But was James Bond ready for the eighties? John Gardner's initial updating of 007 kinda, sorta, sometimes works.

The American – Henry James, 1877 ★★★

Undone in the City of Love

It’s not the most riveting or engaging novel ever written, but Henry James’ The American does boast one of literature’s great put-downs: “I mean to show the world that however bad I may be, you are not quite the people to say it.”

Before there was such a thing as air travel, Henry James was defining what could be called the transatlantic literary genre. Putting Americans in Europe and having them figure out what was what seems a regular theme of his, if novels like Portrait Of A Lady, Daisy Miller, and this are any indication.

It’s an odd thing reading an American author to learn about European mores, but James is unique that way.