The Glory Of Their Times – Lawrence S. Ritter, 1966 ★★★★½

Scraping Off the Sepia

Sometimes they still call baseball Our National Pastime; in the early part of the 20^th century it really was the only game in town. Yet what went on in the Major Leagues then seems impossible today.

Cy Young threw 511 career victories, and 750 complete games. In 1909, Ty Cobb led the majors both in batting average (.377) and home runs (9). Cobb’s teammate Sam Crawford hit over 300 triples in his career.

When Rube Marquard and Babe Adams pitched against each other on July 17, 1914, both went the distance – 21 innings.

Requiem For A Nun – William Faulkner, 1951 ★★½

More Misery for Temple

Many novels can be said to have split personalities; few wear them as open and proud as Requiem For A Nun.

Alternately a series of narrative prose-poems detailing the history of a Southern American town, and as acts in a play about the murder of an infant, Requiem For A Nun demonstrates William Faulkner’s willingness to push against boundaries of culture as well as genre. The result is a mess, if sometimes a moving and involving one.

Flight 714 – Hergé, 1966-68 ★

Hergé Don't Want to Play No More

Reading this reminded me of a childhood friend who grew suddenly disaffected by the games we played. Going through the motions with obvious contempt, he made clear what a drag he now found it all to be. That same sorry vibe hangs over this Tintin adventure.

The story has promise, a tropical adventure set in the south Pacific which introduces Laszlo Carreidas, eccentric tycoon whose comical nastiness serves as a recurring plot point. The art is splashy and sometimes even engaging, incorporating Hergé’s signature ligne-claire style with more shading and texture than usual.

But the more stuff happens, the more you realize the author doesn’t care about the book. Playtime is over; Flight 714 is the glum result.

Sanctuary – William Faulkner, 1931 ★½

Southern Gothic Overdrive

Seeking out an accessible William Faulkner novel is like hunting Bigfoot, except nobody yet has definitively disproved Bigfoot.

I haven’t read every Faulkner novel, but all those I have read present varying degrees of outrageous difficulty. They include this, often touted by lit-buffs as entry-level Faulkner.

Maybe so; just don’t call it easy.

Kon-Tiki – Thor Heyerdahl, 1948 ★★★

Riding the Pacific

In 1947, five Norwegians and a Swede cast themselves 4,300 miles into the world’s largest, stormiest ocean on a raft of wood and hemp to prove a scorned ethnographic theory. Never mind about the theory; their resulting adventure would inspire generations.

For 101 days the Kon-Tiki risked storms, sharks, and ill-advised dingy excursions to make a point. Not about whether ancient Peruvians settled in Polynesia many centuries ago, as Kon-Tiki’s leader Thor Heyerdahl believed, but about the nature of life and man’s place in the world.

Up Country – Nelson DeMille, 2002 ★½

Back in Nam

Up Country is a thriller with few thrills, a cross-country jaunt that goes nowhere and sets up a finale that lands flat as a pancake after 700 pages.

Nelson DeMille had the craft to deliver much better. God knows he had more experience to draw upon than he wanted.

Paul Brenner is a retired U. S. Army investigator summoned back into service in 1997 to solve a 29-year-old crime committed during the height of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam. A Tet veteran himself, Brenner overcomes much reluctance to journey back to the land where he lost both his innocence and many comrades, a nation with its own deep wounds and a marked ambivalence about Americans.

Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography Of Harry S. Truman – Merle Miller, 1974 ★★½

Cocktails with Harry

While written as an oral history of Harry S. Truman, Plain Speaking flows like a morality play in which a hero imparts life lessons and reveals his inner self to one gradually won over by his goodness. But can you trust what you read?

Merle Miller was hired in 1961 by television producer David Susskind to interview Truman for a documentary. Miller had been a published critic of Truman, in particular his decisions to drop atomic bombs on Japan. Yet over time, as the two had a series of meetings to discuss this Truman TV project, Miller found much to like about Give ‘em Hell Harry.