R. U. R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) – Karel Čapek, 1921 ★★★ [Translated by Claudia Novack]

Prometheus Unhinged

A play that famously coined a word for the ages is also a pioneering science fiction work with a vision of a future we are catching up to over a hundred years later.

Just imagine a world where people create artificial devices to do their work, only to find themselves displaced by the same machines faster than you can say “Sarah Connor.”

There was no such word as “robots,” or, to use its original Czech form, roboti, before a young writer named Karel Čapek used it to categorize the menacing non-humans who loom over his play. Karel gave credit to his brother Josef for the word.

Guerrillas – V. S. Naipaul, 1975 ★★½

Uncovering Danger and Lust in the Tropics

Under a haze of bauxite dust and resentment spurred by foreign exploitation, a Caribbean island nation is revealed to be a ticking time bomb, only we never quite know when it will explode. If ever.

Guerrillas pulsates with menace if not a lot of action. Instead, there is much talking and cigarette smoking. Finely written if mostly inert, Guerrillas is less a story than a portrait of attitudinal ennui.

Did I like it? Yes, V. S. Naipaul was a brilliant writer, who here cements his reputation as a keen-eyed hybrid of Evelyn Waugh and Joseph Conrad. Even more than them, though, it’s hard to care about his people.

Decline And Fall – Evelyn Waugh, 1928 ★★★★

A Devilishly Delicious Debut

A famous first novel that holds up on its own merits as well as a signpost for a stellar career, Decline And Fall introduces readers to the scathing satire of Evelyn Waugh, where hope is folly, life is a joke, and people regularly suffer for the sin of being alive.

All that, and it manages to be a lot of fun, too.

Often the pleasure of reading first novels by noted authors is twigging onto themes and motifs developed with greater success in their later, more mature works. But Waugh’s debut has no youthful awkwardness to shed. It is fully accomplished fiction, somewhat facile in places and heavy-handedly abrupt in its ending, but masterful in terms of dialogue, description, and mordant observation.

Washington’s Crossing – David Hackett Fischer, 2004 ★★★★★

America Rolls the Dice

History books that revel in detail can be turn-offs for casual readers. But not always. Washington’s Crossing transforms footnotes into adventures and academic disagreements into entertaining theater. People say history is fun, but they are rarely proven as right as here.

In the early days of the American Revolution, the war could have gone in any direction. David Hackett Fischer details the travails of the Continental Army in 1776, from its defeat on Long Island to its rebirth in New Jersey as it launches a risky attack across the Delaware River.

Today we may think of 1776 as Year Zero of a grand adventure, a rosy dawn of hope and common purpose, whatever came after. But Fischer points out the contemporary outlook was very glum:

Sadie When She Died – Ed McBain, 1972 ★½

Sex and Death in the Big City

The 1970s were called the “Me Decade” because of its tendency for hyper-individuality. Families and communities became untethered as individuals obeyed their needs for self-fulfillment. At least that was the popular view. In Sadie When She Died, we meet a casualty of that culture.

At first the homicide of Sarah Fletcher appears to be the result of a burglary gone wrong. The trail from broken window to bloody corpse is straightforward enough; there’s even a junkie’s confession in Chapter 3. But for lead detective Steve Carella, it’s all too neat.

The more he investigates, the more he learns about Sarah, about a restless life lived on the edge, about a marriage that had fallen apart, about lovers meetings in strange bars. He realizes much more is at play than a simple silverware job.

Biography Of A Phantom: A Robert Johnson Blues Odyssey – Robert “Mack” McCormick, 2023 ★½

On A Guitar God's Tortuous Trail

As the years pile on, true knowledge about a dead legend often melts irretrievably into the realm of myth. If that legend toiled in relative obscurity while alive, the chance for objectivity gets thinner.

Whatever one can say about the merits or intentions of blues scholar Robert “Mack” McCormick, his posthumous account of the life of Robert Johnson makes this clear, for the author and subject.

In the early 1970s, McCormick set out to find the real Johnson by using the living memories of friends and family. In the process, he wound up creating Rashomons of both subject and himself.

Whether you see Mack as a heroic researcher or a greedy exploiter may depend as much on you as on him.

Franny And Zooey – J. D. Salinger, 1961 ★★★

Pilgrims Progress on the Upper East Side

There are books I enjoy reading that I will recommend to anyone happily, unreservedly, because I feel pretty sure you will enjoy them, too. Then there are books like this, which I find diverting and worthy, but also somewhat dubious of merit and selective in appeal.

It is one of its author’s most beloved works, but is Franny And Zooey any good? I don’t know, I guess, maybe. Sure.

Essentially a novel in the form of a linked short story and novella, Franny And Zooey is where Salinger converted from writer to spiritual advisor. His fluid style always followed its own mystical channels, but this marks a clear break from conventional storycraft.