Perjury – Allen Weinstein, 1978 ★★★★

Probing the Fundamental Why of Alger Hiss

Once upon a time, people wondered whether U. S. State Department official Alger Hiss transferred stolen government documents to Soviet intelligence. Then the question became more a matter of why.

Like why did Hiss steal the documents, and why did he keep lying about it after he served his time, right up until he died?

“The fundamental why” is the way Joseph Conrad put it in his epic novel about the nature of guilt, Lord Jim, contrasting it with “the superficial how.” Allan Weinstein quotes that passage in his famous takedown of Hiss, Perjury, which pretty much laid out the how part to most people’s satisfaction more than 30 years ago. Since then, he has never as satisfactorily addressed the why.

Needful Things – Stephen King, 1991 ★½

Let the Buyer Beware

Imagine a whole town crammed to the gills with Gollums; a countryside alive to the steady murmurings of “My precioussss” every evening as the lights go down. If that sort of thing impresses you as profound rather than monotonous, Stephen King has just the novel for you.

As the setting for several King novels and shorter stories, Castle Rock, Maine has seen a lot of crazy things. Now it’s Leland Gaunt’s turn to warp its reality.

Gaunt is the proprietor of a new store, “Needful Things,” a sort of curio shop offering offbeat merchandise catering to the special desires of a diverse array of local residents. The price is always right, too; just what the would-be buyer has in hand.

Dead Solid Perfect – Dan Jenkins, 1974 ★★★½

Tee Offs & Put Ons

People who pick up Dead Solid Perfect expecting a serious endeavor at sports fiction need to understand: This may be a golf novel, but it’s also a Dan Jenkins novel.

Jenkins’ gimmick with sportswriting was not unlike Dean Martin’s about singing: It was something he seemed to do on the way to the bar, preferably with a few bawdy jokes thrown in.

Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes, 1605-15 ★½

Trudging Through a Classic

The book wore me out long before it reached its merciful conclusion, its rambling narrative and repetitive prose making each of its more than a thousand pages like another millstone against my soul. 

And the worst part? All my long nights of reading, I carried with me the guilt I should be enjoying this.

Who am I not to admire Don Quixote?

And Then There Were None – Agatha Christie, 1939 ★★★★½

Putting on a Master Class in Murder

The image of Agatha Christie today is so often interlaid with that of crumpets and cosies, wet-weather ruminations, and dignified Belgians with luxuriant moustaches that one might almost suspect her the author of Tintin comics rather than some of the darkest and most fiendish mysteries of our time.

A quick corrective is on tap in the form of this, one of her blackest and most revered thrillers.

Johnny Carson – Henry Bushkin, 2013 ★★½

Keeping Uneasy Company with America's Host

One day, while being interviewed by a British journalist for an article that would appear in a February, 1978 issue of The New Yorker, the celebrated talk-show host Johnny Carson gave a strange answer to a routine question. Asked whom he regarded as his best friend, Carson named his lawyer, Henry Bushkin.

This must have come as a surprise to many readers, accustomed as they were to Carson’s smooth repartee with a wide range of guests on NBC-TV’s “The Tonight Show.” It certainly surprised Bushkin. 

But it won’t surprise anyone reading Bushkin’s memoir of life with Carson. By the time the anecdote occurs, almost halfway through the book, one senses Carson was a man without much in the way of friends or sentiment.

Hub – Robert Herring, 1981 ★½

Reflections on a Childhood Deferred

Sometimes childhood feels like a present that never quite got unwrapped. I had that feeling twice over with Hub.

Our title character is a pre-teen boy who lives in a river town in Arkansas. He seems the product of a loving, relatively successful family, but his life is centered around two other people.

One is Uncle Ethel, a wise old man who lives on an isolated island, alone but for his aged dog and his shotgun. The other is a trouble-making pal named Hitesy, who badgers Hub to do things he knows he shouldn’t, goading him with the magic word “chicken” whenever Hub hesitates. Hitesy brags his father doesn’t care what he does, and dares Hub to follow his example.