The Cherry Orchard – Anton Chekhov, 1904 [Translation by Ann Dunnigan] ★

What a Bringdown

Chekhov did comedy like Capone did Valentine’s Day.

Further proof of this comes in the form of The Cherry Orchard, a play so non-comedic it was advertised as a tragedy in its Moscow debut, causing Chekhov to blow up.

A Farewell To Arms – Ernest Hemingway, 1929 ★★★

Making the Case for a Subjective Classic

Some books carry associations that have nothing to do with their literary merits. So it is for me and A Farewell To Arms.

Ernest Hemingway’s sprawling tale of love and war was required reading in my final weeks of boarding school. For me, shellfire in Italy and a boozy convalescence became one with cinderblock dorm walls and muddy trails that stretched to and from my classes. Like Frederic Henry at mess hall I watched people I lived with vigorously rag on each other, sensing as he did that I would somehow come to love and miss these days, but wishing in that moment I was somewhere else.

Guests Of The Ayatollah – Mark Bowden, 2006 ★★★

So Much for Diplomacy

For many of us, Orwell’s 1984 is arriving later than advertised. For Iran, it came five years early.

In the newspeak of the Islamic Revolution, “freedom” meant total adherence to rigidly-interpreted doctrine, “peace” was squashing anyone who thought differently, and 66 Americans became “guests” when their nation’s embassy in Tehran, Iran’s capital, was attacked on November 4, 1979.

For most of them, liberation came after 444 days. For the country they were trapped in, it is taking much longer.

The Conquering Sword Of Conan – Robert E. Howard, 2005 [Edited by Patrice Louinet] ★★★½

Farewell to the Hyborian Age

Artists sometimes are most inspired when the world is caving in around them. The need to make sense of the suffering and chaos, or simply wail against the tide, can manifest itself in outstanding work.

Is that why it seems in writing his stories of Conan the Cimmerian, Robert E. Howard saved the best for last? Brilliant as his Conan stories typically are, I don’t know any that holds up as well as “Red Nails,” his final work which caps this third Del-Ray collection of Conan stories.

Yet I still prefer the first volume, The Coming Of Conan, and middle volume The Bloody Crown Of Conan over this. Howard may still offer Conan in all his glory, but the barbarian has shed his familiar world of prior creations for a starker, deeply alien setting. And the yarns Howard spins, while every bit as taut, are more gnarled and knotty.

Zodiac – Robert Graysmith, 1986 [2007 Paperback Edition] ★½

Getting Away with It

It is better sometimes to be first than right.

Take Robert Graysmith and his book Zodiac, a bestseller in its first printing and basis for the 2007 film of the same name. An entire generation of readers got pulled into the true-crime genre thanks to this sprawling tale of a California murder spree which officially ran from December 1968 to October 1969.

Yet the book itself is deeply confused, full of bizarre and absurd claims its author neither substantiates nor connects. Zodiac experts frequently play piñata with Graysmith’s version of the facts. Still, it is this account which dominates popular understanding of this absorbing mystery.

Waverley – Walter Scott, 1814 ★★★

Putting on the Plaid

History is full of accidents. For example, this novel. If not for a missing tackle box, no one would ever have gotten to read it.

In the preface to his 1829 edition of Waverley, Walter Scott explains how he wrote the first few chapters of this, gave it up, and put the manuscript in a garret room where he kept lumber. Poking around said room trying to find a tackle box to lend to a friend, he came across the manuscript, read it, was surprised to enjoy it, and decided to finish it.

And thus history, or rather historical fiction, came to be.