Cleese Encounters – Jonathan Margolis, 1992 ★½

Man of the Middle

When I first watched “Fawlty Towers” as a teen, I thought the humor was the awful, demanding people coming to Basil Fawlty’s hotel. I didn’t realize Basil himself was a problem. He seemed a rock of middle-class authority.

Reading Cleese Encounters, I wonder if a teenaged John Cleese might have seen him the same way.

The Calculus Affair – Hergé, 1954-1956 ★★

Plate-Spinning Replaces Plotting

Creative juices are an unreliable source of energy. Just when you most expect them to flow, they have a habit of letting you down.

This is my theory of what happened to Hergé when it came time for him to follow his two-part spectacular about Tintin landing on the Moon. He went for the same thing, a blend of theoretical science and engaging fantasy served up with lots of character-based comedy, but this time just winged the plot.

It doesn’t quite work, making The Calculus Affair an adventure where, for all his polish and craft, I felt Hergé running close to empty.

The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850 ★★★★

Hester's Enduring Legacy

When a widely-celebrated novel has been around a long time, it gets harder to be objective about it. Say you like it, and you feel like a conformist. Say you don’t, and you’re a crank.

The Scarlet Letter is undoubtedly great, but after 170 years, is it still any good? Does its iron code of morality strike one now as authentic or dated? Is its celebrated symbolism subtle or strained?

A Night To Remember – Walter Lord, 1955 ★★★★

Disaster by Degrees

When the Titanic sank and took some 1,500 souls with her in April 1912, minds reeled at the enormity of the disaster. Some sought religious consolation. Others took pride in the behavior of those who perished, many of whom fell into the category of what we now call elites.

Facing icy extinction, it was said these elites behaved with singular aplomb. By calmly allowing women and children to board the all-too-few lifeboats first, these first-class passengers were a credit to themselves and their order.

Diamonds Are Forever – Ian Fleming, 1956 ★½

Travelogue in Search of a Plot

Ian Fleming was a brilliant travel writer, but he had to contort his travelogues into spy stories to get anyone to pay attention. Nowhere is this case better made than in Diamonds Are Forever.

This fourth installment in the James Bond series puts Bond on the trail of a diamond-smuggling operation, hopping from England to the Eastern United States to the Western United States to what was then still French Guinea in pursuit of gangsters and their fetching gem moll, Tiffany Case.

Wordsworth – Selected by W. E. Williams, 1950 ★★

Biting Off More than I Can Chew

Reading William Wordsworth became a most challenging reading assignment. If enjoyment was my objective, I failed miserably.

He’s technically brilliant and his words are full of joy. His lyricism, his rhyme schemes, his ability to effortlessly conjure up scenes of awesome beauty – he had talent and vision to spare. His short poems feel weirdly effortless in their genius, their Poe-like flow, and simple eloquence.

Hoover's FBI: The Inside Story By Hoover's Trusted Lieutenant – Cartha D. "Deke" DeLoach, 1995 ★★

Sympathy for J. Edgar

J. Edgar Hoover, civil libertarian? According to one of his top aides, yes.

For a time in the 1960s, Cartha DeLoach was the third-ranking executive in the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Bureau’s point man with the White House. Watching his boss dicker with President Lyndon B. Johnson on what the FBI could and couldn’t do under the Constitution was for DeLoach both instructive and edifying: