Rossetti: His Life And Works – Evelyn Waugh, 1928 ★★½

Making a Splash

In his own lifetime, Evelyn Waugh tells us, Dante Gabriel Rossetti was “the bogey of many Victorian drawing-rooms,” scandalizing society with his splashy, vibrant paintings. Few then were ready to appreciate a true romantic who brought a new way of thinking about beauty and life.

His Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of artists blended hyper-realistic detail with medieval-inspired treatments, resulting in a highly individualized style which remains unique and widely admired. While often messy when came to personal matters like money and women, Rossetti was the right artist to challenge a stale period for British culture.

Waugh found this still true nearly a half-century after Rossetti’s death: “By no means the least of the advantages to be gained from a study of Rossetti is the stimulus it gives to one’s restiveness in an era of competent stultification,” he writes.

The Johnstown Flood – David McCullough, 1968 ★★★½

The Price of Fish 

When the dam holding storm-swollen Lake Conemaugh collapsed on May 31, 1889, David McCullough writes how the result was like unleashing Niagara Falls upon the urban sprawl of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Over 2,200 people perished that day.

The survivors’ anguish turned to anger when the full reason for the unprecedented disaster was revealed. The water held by the lake wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place. It was an artificial lake, a playground of privilege for Midwestern tycoons to enjoy their summers.

It was like the Titanic disaster a generation later, but in reverse; the water landing on people instead of people landing in water. Still, there was an anti-capitalist angle in both stories.

Blood Relatives – Ed McBain, 1975 ★★★

One Body, Too Many Suspects

The more Ed McBain novels you read, the more you discover there is no such thing as a straight Ed McBain novel. He avoided the easy path of working to templates or formulas. He wrote police procedurals, yes, but always changed them up with crazy twists or skewed angles.

Blood Relatives may be his closest stab at a routine police procedural, centering on a single murder where suspects and testimonies are worked over until a culprit is found. Yes, he delivers real surprises, but plays his cards straight from the deck.

The results are rather good. McBain’s ability to involve the reader through plot turns and digressions works just as well when he isn’t striving as hard to keep you off-balance.

Big Screen, Little Screen – Rex Reed, 1971 ★★★

Pen as Sword

Harshness is no virtue, but sometimes it comes in handy for an entertainment critic. In that line of work, you make a stronger impression by taking a jab now and again. Making friends is not the objective. Critics who get that can be fun to read.

Back when he was young and bratty, Rex Reed was an expert jabber. Often this worked to the detriment of his craft, a lack of restraint that made him come off more nasty than honest. Yet spiciness did make him colorfully readable, especially when traversing a broad array of culture.

Big Screen, Little Screen is a series of essays and capsule reviews that first appeared in journals like Women’s Wear Daily, Holiday, and The New York Times. Mostly about movies, with some television reviews, Big Screen, Little Screen is an incisive, unabashedly opinionated round-up of cinema as it entered the golden auteur era of the late 1960s-1970s.

Raise High The Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour An Introduction – J. D. Salinger, 1963 ½★

Losing the Plot

After effortlessly crafting a bestselling book by combining two previously published short stories, J. D. Salinger went back to the well here. This time, the link between the pair is much less apparent, and the result less happy.

Man, do I hate this book. To be more specific, I really hate the second half, “Seymour An Introduction.” It’s a car wreck of an abortive fictional profile that, instead of making the more disciplined first half read better, magnifies the same narcissistic, undisciplined qualities.

John Updike wasn’t kidding when he wrote: “Salinger loves the Glasses more than God loves them.” This is what happens when a previously brilliant writer literally and completely loses the plot.