The Price Of Politics – Bob Woodward, 2011 ★★½

The Deal that Failed

Access to the powerful is Bob Woodward’s stock-in-trade, his formula for turning somewhat pedestrian and shallow accounts of current affairs into commercially viable, relevant books.

But what happens when demonstrating that access trumps a thesis or storyline? The Price Of Politics got me thinking about that.

Miss Lonelyhearts & The Day Of The Locust – Nathanael West, 1933 & 1939 ★★★½

Bleak and Bleaker

Misery, it is said, loves company, but the reverse is certainly not as true.

Take the case of Nathanael West, who made human misery the centerpiece of his work. Beloved among the American intelligentsia, he is pretty much ignored by everyone else. 

Reading this, a paperback that brings together his two most famous works, I understand why. There’s dark fiction; this is coal-black.

The Cave Girl – Edgar Rice Burroughs, 1913-17 ★

All Perspiration, No Inspiration

The strongest feeling you get, from both reading Edgar Rice Burroughs and reading about his amazing career, is how critical the principle of flow was for him.

There’s narrative flow: Keep everything moving all the time, so the reader keeps reading.

There’s concept flow: Always work in new ideas in your fiction, even when they closely resemble older ones.

Then there’s product flow: Never stop writing, because you need the money.

Killing Patton: The Strange Death Of World War II’s Most Audacious General – Bill O’Reilly & Martin Dugard, 2014 ★½

Death Comes for the General

He came, he saw, he conquered. Then, some months after, en route to a pheasant hunt just days before his scheduled return home, he died.

Was it really an accident? Or did certain powers-that-be rule Gen. George S. Patton, Jr. too dangerous to live?

The latter notion is entertained in this, the most recent release in the Killing series of books co-authored by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard.

Roscoe – William Kennedy, 2002 ★★★

Politics and the Art of the Lie

The only two sure things in life are death and taxes; that’s no less true for those who collect the taxes. 

William Kennedy takes a sympathetic look at a wheeler-dealer who ran one of America’s most powerful and longest-lived political machines while he takes on the prospect of his own mortality.