The Third Man – Graham Greene, 1949 ★★★½

Dirty Deeds in Vienna

Trust no one. Believe nothing. Whenever you imagine the worst possible outcome, rest assured the final result will be worse.

Paranoia as art had been around for most of the 20^th century; in The Third Man Graham Greene transformed it into entertainment, a mass-market hit on its own which connected to the unsettled postwar zeitgeist. A seminal work, unquestionably; but how good, really?

As a movie, which is how it is best remembered, The Third Man holds up quite well with a striking visual approach and engaging performances. As a book, what you get is a lean, well-paced mystery story enveloped in postwar atmosphere and European ennui.

North And South – John Jakes, 1982 ★★

Too Thick for its Own Good

Why do big, thick fiction novels invest in me a sense of awe that smaller tomes do not? Do I not recall Hemingway’s thoughts on the value of concision? Or how a tight narrative framework often works best, even when the subject is the American Civil War?

You can fit The Red Badge Of Courage in your pocket or purse. Good luck trying that with North And South.

John Jakes followed up the amazing success of his eight-volume “Kent Family Chronicles” by kicking off what proved an even bigger commercial triumph, the story of two American families united in duty but driven apart by war and the “peculiar institution” known as slavery. The result is a hodgepodge of crafty plotting and loose writing, of flat characters and engaging storycraft.

Uncle Vanya – Anton Chekhov, 1898 [Translation by Ann Dunnigan] ★

A Play about Nothing

How can one put this gently? Many if not most people of education and culture regard Anton Chekhov as the master of modern drama, and if his Uncle Vanya is any indication, they are all horribly wrong.

Chekhov wrote for an audience that wanted, as he did, the ambiguity of real human experience, that sought a mirror held up to everyday life and molded into something that held its own on stage. He wrote to a specific Russian mindset that understand life was harsh and short.

I get all that. I want to embrace Uncle Vanya because not doing so marks one as a knuckle-dragging philistine. But I can’t. I really hate this play.

Babe: The Legend Comes To Life – Robert W. Creamer, 1974 ★★★

Too Much Perspective

Visiting his home turf of Yankee Stadium for what proved his last time, on Opening Day 1947, a cancer-stricken Babe Ruth rasped out what seems in retrospect a bittersweet epitaph on his singular life:

“The only real game in the world, I think, is baseball.”

By then, Ruth’s life had become a shell of what it was, both from the disease slowly killing him and his exile from the game that gave his life its meaning, purpose, and glory. Robert Creamer’s 1974 biography puts in all in perspective. Or as Spinal Tap’s David St. Hubbins once put it, as he beheld the grave of another idol, “too much bleedin’ perspective.”