Daily Blague

I spent last evening in a warm, Francophone hum. First, I watched Arsène Lupin. Then I read Le Prix de l'Argent, the latest installation - and a half-installation at that, to be continued, if you please! - of Largo Winch's adventures. (Well, it's not the latest, I see. It was,  though, when I put it in my shopping basket!) The two pastimes went together very well.

Jean-Paul Salomé's 2004 adaptation of the Arsène Lupin stories was never released in the United States, and therefore no DVD was produced for the North American Region. Having finally purchased a DVD player that reads discs from all regions, however, I can now order DVDs directly from France - or from anywhere! - as long as I want to watch them in the bedroom, which is where the special player is installed. Even before I hooked up the new machine, I had a few DVDs that wouldn't play on a regular American player. Le chat, for instance. I have no idea why this classic study of marital discord, starring Jean Gabin and Simone Signoret, has not been reissued by the Criterion Collection, much less overlooked entirely. I bought a copy of Keeping Mum while it was still in the American theatres - what a moron. Had I but waited... And there's a Spanish film in the new-disc basket that I don't even remember ordering. You know how that is.

But Arsène Lupin justifies the new DVD machine as no other movie could. I can understand why it was not released here, even though it stars Romain Duris, Kristen Scott Thomas, and Eva Green. It is a very good film, of its type, but that's the problem. The type that it belongs to could best/most misleadingly be described as "Gallic Indiana Jones." You're right: at the end of the day, "Gallic Indiana Jones" just does not compute. It will take me weeks to be more articulate, but for the moment I'll just say that Arsène Lupin is, from an American marketing perspective, toxically melodramatic. (You'll find something about Arsène Lupin here.)

And then there are the subtitles.

There are subtitles.

But they are in French. In French only. Thank heaven! Because I would never have been able to follow the story without French subtitles. I'm not entirely sure that, even with their help, I did follow the story. But I think I did. Let me tell you: it was GREAT FUN to watch Kristen Scott Thomas underplay a semi-supernatural villainess out of Edward Gorey. If nothing else, Arsène Lupin taught me that Ms Scott Thomas was put on this earth to enact all the great Gorey roles, even if, being for women, they are rather brief. But La chauve-souris dorée - how magnificent she'd be! And the original Gorey title is already in French! (It means - and, really, the humor of the thing totally hangs from the difference between the music of the French title and the brutal English - "The Gilded Bat." There's something about that "Bat" that's like an insect smashed on a windshield.)

And yes, I did say "underplay." The lady is exquisite.

Monsieur Duris, on the other hand, rivals Johnny Depp for swashbuckling, although he is not the least little bit camp. This movie was made before his "breakthrough" (I'm not sure that it was), De battre mon coeur s'est arrêté, but it's an enormous vote of confidence, and he tackles the part with the self-assurance of Cary Grant. Eva Green, who stole my eyes, if not my heart, in Casino Royale, gets to play the innocent girl, and, being Eva Green, that means that she makes innocence interesting.

A costume historian would have a field day attacking the outfits. The gowns are almost willfully anachronistic. Ms Scott Thomas's character appears to favor 1910 for daytime wear and 1885 for the evenings. Major hoot. You think the French don't know what they're doing? About couture?

As for Largo Winch - the wonderful thing is that I can really read Largo Winch now. Only rarely do I have to look anything up, and even then I don't, really; I've caught the sense. This evening, I had to look up "comparaître" and "surenchérir," among a very few other words. For those of you who've never heard of this series of bandes dessinées - comic books for grownups - Largo Winch is a hunky blond who inherits a vast conglomerate, which he thereupon tries to run on idealistic lines, while treating décolletée ladies with the most thoroughgoing chivalry. On one level, it's Playboy fantasy. That is, not only are the babes stacked, but the "article" is worth reading! On another level, the series idealizes a certain fantasy of American life. Creators Jean van Hamme (writer) and Philippe Francg (drawings)* have clearly expensed a lot of quality time on this side of the pond, looking and listening, and the Largo Winch series almost reads like an American cartoon that has been translated into French. In that sense, the series is the complete opposite of Arsène Lupin. In the end, though, only a French (all right, Belgian) writer would come up with the hero's totally super name. Largo Winch! Is that studly or what? The one invention that I can find in these books is the headquarters of Group W, a tower on Central Park West, next to the Dakota. Everything else is scrupulous. Le Prix de l'Argent, for example, will tell you what the Waldorf-Astoria looks like, and how far it is from the Helmsley Building at the bottom of Park Avenue. Better than a photograph, I assure you!

In Le Prix de l'Argent - the story is completed in La Loi du Dollar - Largo is upset to find out that a subsidiary of a subsidiary of a subsidiary in his vast holdings has fired all its employees and moved its operations to the Czech Republic. How could this happen? Cooked books and stock options, of course! I expect that many Continental readers will pick up the ABCs of executive enrichment from this book's very plausible plot. There's lots of action along the way, because - did I forget to say this? - Largo Winch went to the James Bond School of Management. He is forever being shot at and handcuffed. I know; I said "Playboy fantasy." I meant - and what's probably the selfsame thing - "B School fantasy." If only quarterly meetings were like this!

* I probably have these accreditations completely backward. Pardon!

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With Memorial Day behind us, I have the empty feeling that nothing is going to change very much on the political front until Labor Day is also behind us. The Democrats may have recaptured Congress last November, but I can think of nothing that has changed since then. The Bush Administration continues to be arrogant and out of touch, and the Iraqi misadventure slogs on. Rudy Giuliani is consolidating his candidacy, while Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton continue their kabuki. Why, when poll after poll shows that most Americans want an end to the war, does it persist? The other day, I wrote about the problem with polls, but even assuming them to be trustworthy there would still be something missing. What? Paul Krugman put his finger on what's missing in his column on Monday.

Democratic Party activists were furious, because polls show a public utterly disillusioned with Mr. Bush and anxious to see the war ended. But it’s not clear that the leadership was wrong to be cautious. The truth is that the nightmare of the Bush years won’t really be over until politicians are convinced that voters will punish, not reward, Bush-style fear-mongering. And that hasn’t happened yet.

Here’s the way it ought to be: When Rudy Giuliani says that Iran, which had nothing to do with 9/11, is part of a “movement” that “has already displayed more aggressive tendencies by coming here and killing us,” he should be treated as a lunatic.

When Mitt Romney says that a coalition of “Shia and Sunni and Hezbollah and Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda” wants to “bring down the West,” he should be ridiculed for his ignorance.

And when John McCain says that Osama, who isn’t in Iraq, will “follow us home” if we leave, he should be laughed at.

But they aren’t, at least not yet. And until belligerent, uninformed posturing starts being treated with the contempt it deserves, men who know nothing of the cost of war will keep sending other people’s children to graves at Arlington.

Americans need to be roused to their better selves. Ideally, the Republican Party would act responsibly and stop manipulating anxieties for purely political purposes. Perhaps the Democrats could persuade a plausible presidential nominee to sit this election out and spend the campaign denouncing the fear-mongerers as such.

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In which we have a look at this week's New York Times Book Review.

There are few well-conceived reviews this week. Siddhartha Deb on Lydia Davis is about it. Frank Rich is eloquent about Falling Man, but his piece belongs on the Op-Ed page. Thomas Mallon writes very well about Juliet Nicholson's survey of England in 1911, but he storytells to distraction, and eclipses the book itself.

When I sorted the books preliminarily, Marco Pierre White's memoir was among the Yeses. Actually writing up the review, I was moved to move it to the Maybes. Yes, David Kamp likes it, and he makes it sound like a good read. But he fails to make the case that the book belongs in the Review. On the point of noting, just a moment ago, that William D Cohan's book about Lazard Frères belongs in the Business section, I realized that Mr White's book belongs in the Dining In/Dining Out section. (Imagine the following in caps: Just being a book does not destine a title to Book Review coverage. There are other places in the luxuriant spread of the Times for such notices.) That's the first time that a book has dropped from Yes to No, via Maybe, since I began organizing the Review review as I do.

If both The Lizard Cage and The Sea Lady are the magnificent novels that their reviewers claim them to be, then surely the editors ought to have provided more room. Both reviews feel jagged and peremptory, and talk too much about current affairs.

Yes

The following titles appear to deserve coverage in the Book Review. The reviews may still be inadequate or useless.

Falling Man, by Don DeLillo. Don DeLillo's 9/11 novel is as close as it gets to required reading, so perhaps there's no need for a review, and it doesn't matter that Frank Rich's essay in the Book Review doesn't function very well as one. Mr Rich writes about 9/11, about Mr DeLillo's career - especially his record of highly predictive fiction - and he storytells the new novel. But none of this gives us a chance to assess the power of Falling Man. On the contrary, it stands in the way.

The Lizard Cage, by Karen Connelly. Lorraine Adams's review claims that this novel about political imprisonment out-Orwells Orwell:

Connelly's novel accomplishes something Orwell never managed: it gets inside the head of that "conscious man." Her prisoner's innermost self is laid bare in the pages of The Lizard Cage - even his most unbecoming moments. Unlike Wei or Mandela, who wrote for a public that had enshrined them as heroic figures, Connelly's fictional character has no constituency, no reputation to uphold. Through him, she shows us what autobiography usually veils: the human spirit not at its most defiant and brave, but as it really is and can only be.

Too much of the review, however, is taken up with collateral issues, such as the recent history of Burma (the novel's setting).

The Sea Lady: A Late Romance, by Margaret Drabble. Paul Gray's review seems almost grudgingly favorable. The author's career is rehearsed, in relation to British politics of the time. About the book itself, Mr Gray is something of a tease. It may be necessary to withhold information so as not to spoil the reader's fun, but teasing is warranted.

A Tranquil Star: Unpublished Stories, by Primo Levi (translated by Ann Goldstein and Alessandra Bastagli). Jonathan Rosen doesn't take issue with this book's subtitle: these stories have never been translated into English before. He notes that Levi's stories read like joint projects of Ray Bradbury and Kafka, and he praises the translation. Then thumbnails the stories that interest him the most, pontificating reverently throughout on the Holocaust and human degradation at every opportunity.

Varieties of Disturbance: Stories, by Lydia Davis. Writing of a story about two scholars arguing over which translation of Proust is better - and Ms Davis has translated Du côté de chez Swann - Siddhartha Deb summarizes Ms Davis's art:

We have read three passages about circular walks, which may sound indulgent. In fact, the deceptively simply story becomes a palimpsest in which the current experience is seen to be a rewriting of other, previous experiences, and Proust's memory of a childhood already vanished at the time of writing comes alive in the evening walk of two middle-aged scholars adrift in a foreign university town. Haunting, dreamlike and yet indisputably real, "The Walk" perfectly illustrates Davis's exceptional skills as a writer. Her belief that language is both the subject and the medium of fiction has not led her, as we might expect, into solipsistic echo chambers, but into new worlds.

Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: A Year of Food Life, by Barbara Kingsolver. As we understand the contemporary food supply as it really is, lucid alternatives, such as Ms Kingsolver's "locavore" experiment (eating only her own produce), make for compelling reading. Corby Kummer claims that this book provides exactly that, with "some lovely food writing" thrown in for extra pleasure.

The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science, by Natalie Angier. Toward the end of his favorable review, Steven Pinker faults the author for resorting too often to clever-sounding analogies that do not lead to greater understanding. His theory of metaphor is surprisingly literary, but surely his objections on this point merit no more than a sentence or two, not three paragraphs. Mr Pinker notes that Ms Angier is true to her subtitle, and does not get involved in cutting-edge scraps.

The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace, by Ali A Allawi. Mr Wong complains that Mr Allawi's very interesting portrait of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is unmatched by his descriptions of other leading actors in the rending of Iraqi society, but he does praise the author for unpacking the work of Ali al-Wardi, a psychologist and an historian, for Western readers.

The Perfect Summer: England 1911, Just Before the Storm, by Juliet Nicholson. On the whole, Thomas Mallon likes this book, written by the granddaughter of, among other things, a novel called The Edwardians, Vita Sackville-West. He disagrees, however, with its thesis that England was undergoing a transformation on the eve of World War I. Mr Mallon sees nothing but a death wish. As often with Mr Mallon's highly articulate reviews, there is too much storytelling, which is always particularly objectionable in the context of histories. What did Mr Mallon know before he read 1911, and what will the reader find in it.

Maybe

It is difficult to tell whether these books are actually as indifferent or pointless as the reviews suggest.

Flight, by Sherman Alexie. Tom Barbash's enthusiastic review is downright confusing, at least to this reader, because its jumble of vivid terms - "high-concept extravaganza," "narrative stripped to the bone," "hyperactive mind" - don't add up to coherence. Is the following supposed to be praise?

Reading Flight is a bit like falling through the sort of nightmares you might have after too much late-night television and spicy food. Or like being asked to close your eyes and listen to a series of visual clues.

My Holocaust, by Tova Reich. David Margolick's review can only be called "choking."

At a time when morons and bigots say the Holocaust never happened, or that it wasn't such a big deal if it did, the business of publicizing and exploiting the mass murder of European Jewry for political, financial, or institutional gain is something we Jews would rather not discuss, except among ourselves. Reich has taken this taboo and built an entire novel - wickedly clever and shocking, tasteless and tedious, infuriating and maybe even marginally constructive - on it.

City of Oranges: An Intimate History of Arabs and Jews in Jaffa, by Adam LeBor. Gershom Gorenburg never comes out and calls this book tendentious, but he does point out that the author's viewpoint is pro-Palestinian, and that the book first appeared in the UK. "City of Oranges is an engaging, well-constructed book, even if its characters are more colorful than complex."

Four Queens: The Provençal Sisters Who Ruled Europe, by Nancy Goldstone. Megan Marshall makes it clear that this is not a serious work of history but a book of wonders: four sisters married princes and kings and ran Europe through their husbands. Poppycock. "Goldstone repeatedly asserts that one episode or another showed the Berenger sisters influencing events, but her evidence doesn't always support her claims."

The Jesus Machine: How James Dobson, Focus on the Family, and Evangelical Americans Are Winning the Culture War, by Dan Gilgoff. Jacob Heilbrunn aims his vaporizer at this book, but doesn't shoot. He notes that Mr Gilgoff is a "dispassionate" reporter of his material. As for that subtitle, though:

But as Gilgoff also says in his rather perfunctory conclusion, the religious right remains bedeviled by factional disputes... Despite this book's striking subtitle, the culture war seems to be petering out, with the religious right far from victory. It may now be demonstrating not the exertions of a virile new political species, but the thrashings of a dinosaur that can do a lot of damage in its final throes.

Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr, by Nancy Isenberg. Jill Lepore's generally favorable and engaged review suggests that Ms Isenberg ultimately fails to make her case.

The problem is, it's hard, even after reading Fallen Founder, not to agree with Burr's enemies that he was a bit of a schemer, probably a traitor and at least some kind of fiend. Surely we would understand the founders better if we followed Isenberg and put a little more flesh on their bones. But Aaron Burr has a little too much on his.

The Rose Café: Love and War in Corsica, by John Hanson Mitchell. It's possible that The Rose Café is a quiet but concentrated jewel of a memoir, in which the author waits out the Vietnam War in spicy territory. If so, reviewer Alida Becker has completely failed to convey the rapture that would flood from such a book.

No

These books, if they deserve coverage at all, ought to grace other sections of The New York Times.

A Devil in the Kitchen: Sex, Pain, Madness, and the Making of a Great Chef, by Marco Pierre White, with James Steen. David Kamp compares Mr White to "future rock stars who lost their mothers young," and he says that Mr White's book is "a moving, unaffected, delightfully honest book. At times, it's almost sweet." The chef's very physical responses to impatience are not overlooked. Whenever the nominal author writes with the assistance of a professional helper, however, the review ought to give some idea of the success of the ventriloquism.

The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Frères & Co, by William D Cohan. Richard Parker writes,

In many of its details, The Last Tycoons" will captivate those closest to the industry. ... But for a general audience, there is little that will seem new after two decades of Enrons, Worldcoms and Milkens - all tales of similarly motivated me, the Masters of the Universe.

In other words, this book belongs in the newspaper's Business Section.

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There are two stories in today's Times that got me thinking about nationalism, which is nothing but tribalism on a large scale, and the wicked fairy that curses democracy. Estonians are having problems with the ethnic Russians that Stalin planted in their country. Isn't it funny that these "Russians" don't want to go "home"? And we, of course, are having trouble with illegal immigrants, or at least with figuring out how to deal with the "problem." Isn't it funny that the nation that won't shut up about the glories of free markets lurches with cartoonish ineptitude in vain attempts to seal its borders to would-be workers? Yes, it's very funny. Ha ha.

But I'll let you think about it instead. I've been distracted by a fragment from a story in the Metro Section, "Car Crashed Into a Restaurant, Injuring Six." There's no byline, so I can't toast the writer/reporter who surveyed the damage at a Hamilton Heights branch of Popeye's, and noted,

An unfinished meal of fried chicken sat amid the wreckage, and tire tracks showed the path the car took from the street into the restaurant.

"An unfinished meal of fried chicken sat amid the wreckage" - it's pure poetry.

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Most of the first chapter of Ian McEwan's new novel, On Chesil Beach - it will come out in the US in June - was published in The New Yorker last year. The story of a newlywed couple headed straight for sexual disaster was as horrifying to read as The Silence of the Lambs. You wonder what on earth can happen next. A beautiful novel is what happens next. It is Mr McEwan's most moving novel so far. Until now, I've always had a hard time picking one McEwan title to recommend to readers unfamiliar with his work. No longer: On Chesil Beach is the place to begin.

In the accompanying essay (see link below), I have refrained from looking past the first chapter, because I wouldn't want to spoil the story. Someday, when I decide that everyone has read it who is going to read it (if you know what I mean by that absurdity), and the novel has acquired a settled reputation, I will explore the fifth and final chapter, which is thrilling rather than horrifying, and then quite elegaic.

For those of you who like audiobooks, Mr McEwan has recorded his text unabridged. I may just have to hear it.

¶ On Chesil Beach.

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UPDATE: I am immesely proud to be part of this picture. It's the first collective photograph that I've ever belonged to with my heart and soul.

For some time, I've had plans to get together with the Ganome when he came to New York for the GB:NYC4 meetup on Bear/Blogger Hill in Central Park. In other words, today. The Ganome called just before noon, from the Port Authority. We agreed to meet at the Met, which is, among other things, not too far from Central Park, being in it. He arrived with his boss, the Butter Monkey. The Monkey is a few years younger than the Ganome (ie our children's age), but smart as a whip and extremely pleasant to talk to.

When we'd finished our lunch, I asked my friends if there was anything that they wanted to see in the museum before heading out, because I could probably take them straight to it. I am so abominably conceited about my familiarity with the museum's layout. But I didn't get to show off today, because what they really wanted was directions to the Sheep's Meadow. I was only too happy to walk them there. I didn't yet know where Bear/Blogger Hill is, because I hadn't planned to attend one of Joe's weekly retreats. But I know how to get to the Sheep's Meadow, and we walked all the way round it - a complete circuit! - before finding that the Hill is very near the Naumberg Bandshell, which we'd passed earlier. But we did find it. I was privileged to introduce the Ganome and the Monkey to Joe. I met a few people and nodded to a few others whom I'd seen at other gatherings, but, having just met the Ganome and the Monkey and gotten to know something about them in person, I wasn't taking in much new information. One of the farmboyz took a picture of the group while I was there, and I'm in it, I suppose.

For the most part, I watched the rollerbladers at the base of the hill. There were very gifted dancers, such as Disco Grandma, who performed as if they were Olympians on the ice. There were character dancers, like Bladey, wearing loud costumes (I got to see Bladey's arrival on his clownish bicycle, announced by its throaty klaxon). There was a wonderfully chunky middle-aged woman who had no moves at all. She just huffed her way up the gentle slope and stood still on her skates coming down the other side. My favorite act was Bottle. Bottle is a very graceful and well-built black man who, in addition to his skates, wears only a pair of very exotic harem pants and two wristbands. He's called Bottle because he likes to glide along with a liter of bottled water standing on his head, but unattached to it in any way. If he could find a more artistic vessel, he would look like something out of the old Ballets-Russes. He and Bladey danced together a few times, side by side. I applauded a few times, although that generally wasn't done.

So there I was in Central Park on a Saturday afternoon, surrounded by interesting guys and overlooking an appealing spectacle. The weather was perhaps a trifle warm, but there was a lovely breeze, and I was comfortable enough.

At about four-thirty, I said goodbye to all and went to catch the Third Avenue bus. As packed as the Park was, the Upper East Side was empty. Neutroned! We've entered the Hamptons season. 

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I hadn't expected to see Waitress. The trailer was a bit hyperglycemic for me. All that pie! All those Southern accents! Waitresses working in a diner-like restaurant. And Keri Russell is really just too pretty.

But there I was, casting around for something to see last night. Ordinarily, of course, I see movies on Friday morning, as early as possible, but yesterday I had a very important engagement elsewhere. I thought I'd look for something in the later afternoon, but by the time that came around I was a bit tired and wanted only to go home and read.

Kathleen, however, instead of working until ten o'clock, scheduled a facial for seven. She was out at a little past eight. But even though she went back to the office to tidy up some things, she wanted to go to the movies. I was in no mood to leave the neighborhood by that time, but I was confronted with unusually limited choices. Across the street, they're showing Shrek III in all four auditoriums. At the Orpheum, a further four theatres have been dedicated to showing off Johnny Depp. So, in the end, Kathleen and I met at Burger Heaven at nine and strolled over to UA East at ten.

(I rarely complain about movie theatres because I rarely have any reason to. But conditions were poor at the UA East. The women's bathroom had overflowed shortly before our arrival, and the auditorium felt airless and almost-too-warm all the way through the film. Boo!)

¶ Waitress.

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One fine day in June, 1962, I screwed myself up to my full height (6'4½" at that time) and bought a copy of The New Yorker. I was fourteen, but carrying The New Yorker around convinced me that I could just skip the rest of adolescence. Which turned out to be not so hot an idea. But with a few occasional lapses, I would be a regular reader of the magazine for the next forty-five years (next month).

I bought the issue for June 16, 1962. I know this because The Complete New Yorker tells me so. I remember the cover - a bevy of brides drawn by an illustrator who would become very dear to me (as a reader), Abe Birnbaum. The Complete New Yorker also confirms my recollection that the first installment of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring ran that week. I did not read all three installments all the way through - I had nothing like the stamina necessary to swallow such adult fare. And I wasn't all that into nature or corporate shenanigans. I was into the idea of founding my own version of The New Yorker, which I would call The Quill, and not facetiously, either: I was trying to learn to write with quill pens at the time. You do things like that when you decide that you can skip adolescence. And quill pens are certainly better for the environment.

¶ Elizabeth Kolbert on Silent Spring, in The New Yorker.

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The original Oxford English Dictionary goes straight from "socialistic" to "sociality." No "socialite." The Random House Unabridged Dictionary dates "socialite" to 1925-1930. (Where is Lighter when we need him?) It's a dreadful word, and I can't imagine that anyone relishes its application to herself.

(Most "socialites" are women, or, more specifically, wives or widows of rich men. Martha Stewart started out as a junior socialite, but nowadays she could go to every benefit in creation and still not qualify.)

"Real People Meet Real Design," is the unfortunate title of Penelope Green's story, in the Times, about rounding up four individuals from different walks of life for a tour of the International Contemporary Furniture Fair at the Javits last weekend. The idea behind the story:four totally ordinary people, surrogates for you and me, cast their gimlet eyes on furniture with an attitude. But where do reporters find ordinary people? Mark Crispin Miller, NYU media scourge, was one of the quartet. I'm looking forward to meeting him at a book event at McNally Robinson in June, but I doubt that I will ask him about this faintly embarrassing exposure. Tony Shellman, an entrepreneur, and Leah Levy, a ninth-grader, were also part of the team. But what caught my eye was the billing that Frances Hayward got. "The Socialite." Ms Hayward is presumably the person most likely to buy, or to decide not to buy, the goods on offer at the Fair.

Would the fact that Ms Bayard is the tenant of Grey Gardens have anything to do with her Q? Perish the thought. 

In 1906, just over a century ago, Edith Wharton wrote, "The American landscape has no foreground, & the American mind no background." This is still,

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Things aren't going well up here in Yorkville. A phone message that I never heard was thrust in my face. People who probably don't mean it hurt me big time. I'm angry and lost, and, if it weren't for Kathleen, I'd also be stupid. But Kathleen is in my life because I knew that she would understand everything that I'm up against, and I was right. Kathleen rocks/rules.  

Which is another way of saying that, even though I'm a man who has loved his wife without incident for over twenty-five years, I do not have the gift of friendship. I don't, actually, have any friends at all.

Well, I have Fossil Darling, with whom I was thrown into a room by a prep school in 1963. But FD is famous for forgiving everybody. One of these days, he is simply not going to forgive me for the terrible things that I say to him, and then I'll be Tilt.

But here I am, about to be sixty, with no friends. Which is to say that there are two. Everybody else is a friend of Kathleen's. (And I love Kathleen's friends.) There's George and there's Susan. Well, of course there's Fossil Darling, but he's the guy I got stuck with in boarding school, n'est-ce pas, as am I for him.

Enough about my arid landscape. You have more friends than I do and I advise you to treasure them. Make sure you understand why you like them. And don't get mixed up with couples - never, ever, short-circuit your relationships. You can't like two different people in a way that each would like, so give up in advance.

Find your friends, and, if necessary, ditch your responsibilities. God knows I'd have liked to.

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The new Rufus Wainwright album, Release the Stars, arrived yesterday. I listened to it while I was tidying up the blue room. I liked it, but nothing really grabbed me, until the penultimate song, "Sanssouci," which I listened to no fewer than thirty-three times. I even got the yodel down.

The words are somewhat kinky (this is, after all, Rufus), but the tune is primo pop. I just want to be where this song is.

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Science tells us that the Y chromosome, carried by most men, is shedding jeans. Typical! Researchers are looking into how long it will take for the chromosome to become totally clueless. In the event of which, need I say, the patriarchy will come to and end.

Along with the rest of humanity, you say; but not so fast! Five dollar word to the rescue: parthenogenesis! "Female Shark Reproduced Without Male DNA, Scientists Say."

Parthenogenisis has nothing to do with the Parthenon, but it is a reminder of how the goddess honored by that temple was born: without mating. As everybody knows, Athena was born from the head of Zeus, but not without mating. Zeus screwed the Titaness Metis, only then to learn from an oracle that, if Metis had a second child, it would be a boy who would displace his father.

Therefore, having coaxed Metis to a couch with honeyed words, Zeus suddenly opened his mouth and swallowed her, and that was the end of Metis, though he claimed afterwards that she gave him counsel from inside his belly. In due process of time, he was seized by a raging headache as he walked by the shores of Lake Triton, so that his skull seemed about to burst, and he howled for rage until the whole firmament echoed. Up ran Hermes, who at once divined the cause of Zeus's discomfort. He persuaded Hephaestus, or some say Prometheus, to fetch his wedge and beetle and make a breach in Zeus's skull, from which Athene sprang, fully armed, with a mighty shout.

There is nothing like Robert Graves's The Greek Myths before you've had your first cup of coffee in the morning.

Men in a nutshell: the species that won't be relieved to hear that it's unnecessary for reproduction even though it's vaguely annoyed every time it makes some woman pregnant.

The "without male DNA" construction is pretty cute, too.

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In which we have a look at this week's New York Times Book Review.

What's in the water? I seem to have gotten very permissive this week, with more Yeses than Maybes. Even with all the worthy subjects addressed this week, however, the editors managed to squeeze in two wholly undeserving books, one a bit of raunchy ventriloquism about Mickey Mantle, the other a "historical" action book about the move of the Knights of St John from Rhodes to Malta.

Rachel Donadio's Essay, "Point of Order," is about Robert's Rules of Order, which, it may interest you to know, remains copyrighted, if eminently knock-off-able. It interested me to learn that the rules are traceable back to Thomas Jefferson. Aside from the fact that they appear between covers, it's difficult to know what Robert's Rules are doing in the Book Review. What's next? Hoyle's?

Yes

The following titles appear to deserve coverage in the Book Review. The reviews may still be inadequate or useless.

Fellow Travelers, by Thomas Mallon. Michael Gorra finds this novel about the McCarthyite gay witch hunt "appealing," written in "crisp, buoyant" prose. As an example of mish-mashed storytelling, however, his review is hard to beat.

The Gentle Axe, by R N Morris. Liesl Schillinger compares this book favorably to some successful recent historical novels.

Admirably, Morris doesn't overhandle the language. Unlike, saay, Caleb Carr in The Alienist or Iain Pears in "An Instance of the Fingerpost," he doesn't hit false notes in tone or affect baroque accents.

Ms Schillinger also writes that the novel, which follows up the subsequent career of the examining magistrate in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, seems "less like a modern tribute to Dostoyevsky than a translation of an overlooked novel by one of his contemporary imitators."

In the Driver's Seat: Stories, by Helen Simpson. Maile Meloy likes some of these stories much better than others, but her praise outweighs her disappointment. She does quote nearly enough to convey a sense of Ms Simpson's rhythms, alas. Her conclusion:

In the Driver's Seat contains some wonderful stories, and if it seems rushed and uneven, I still sided with Simpson's practical-minded characters - like the one who gets a furtive kiss from her 9-year-old son in full view of his school - for whom the good moments, sometimes achingly perfect, make up for the rest.

The Atomic Bazaar: The Rise of the Nuclear Poor, by William Langeweische. Jonathan Raban admires this book, which traces the all-too-surmountable obstacles facing a terrorist who wished to attack the United States with nuclear weaponry, praising its "cool, precise, and economical reporting." But he regrets that more of an effort was not made to translate a series of Atlantic articles into a proper book.

The Clarks of Cooperstown: Their Singer Sewing Machine Fortune, Their Great and Influential Art Collections, Their Forty-Year Feud, by Nicholas Fox Weber. Debby Applegate doesn't think much of Mr Weber's storytelling skills, but she suggests that the book's interest lies in its handling of the art collecting indulged by the third generation of the Clark family.

Instead of evoking a dramatic family saga, he structures his book as a series of meandering and repetitive biographical sketches that muddle the plot and tax the reader's patience. All the same, art lovers will be intoxicated by the sheer abundance of masterpieces. Here, Weber is at his best, describing art in a vivid, straightforward manner, free of pedantry. And he has a gift for breathing like into styles now out of vogue.

Although the book might not be ideal, the review makes it clear that its subject is rich in more than mere art talk.

The Door of No Return: The History of Cape Coast Castle and the Atlantic Slave Trade, by William St Clair. According to reviewer Caroline Elkins, this book about the portal between Africa and slavery, "brings to life the small crew of expatriates - rarely more than 50 along the entire coast - responsible for the castle's operations."

Though death loomed large, the castle bustled with activity, Africans, mulattoes, the occasional European woman, livestock, voracious ants, poisonous snakes, exotic birds, even a declawed leopard created a carnival-like atmosphere that seldom hinted at the otherwise grim business at hand.

Ms Elkins believes that Mr St Clair would have done better to "venture further into the interior" of Africa, but that is clearly what the historian determined not to do.

Einstein: His Life and Universe, by Walter Isaacson; Einstein: A Biography, by Jürgen Neffe (translated by Shelley Frisch). Corey S Powell reviews two new biographies of the iconic genius.

Both authors justify themselves in part by incorporating recently unearthed bits of Einsteiniana, including a trove of personal letters released by Hebrew University last year. At a deeper level, though, these books owe their existence not to new scholarship but to an old frustration. A half-century after Einstein's death, his theories and the mind that spawned them remain as baffling as ever.

According to Mr Powell, Mr Isaacson's Einstein is a "resilient humanist," while he's a "naive idealist" to Mr Neffe.

Ralph Ellison: A Biography, by Arnold Rampersad. Brent Staples calls Mr Rampersad "uniquely qualified to examine the Ellison case," a writer's stretched out failure to follow an incandescent first novel with a second novel of any quality. It is clear from Mr Staples's review that Ellison's idea of "the epitome of Negro psychological and even spiritual ingenuity in response to white terror" is worth looking into.

Maybe

It is difficult to tell whether these books are actually as indifferent or pointless as the reviews suggest.

The Descendants, by Kaui Hart Hemmings. Joanna Kavenna's somewhat dissonant review talks up the harrowing things that happen to Ms Hemmings's protagonist, but also speaks of the book as a "comedy." The quoted passages might well come from a comedy, but they just as well might not. A confusing review.

The Secret of Lost Things, by Sheridan Hay. Meg Wolitzer likes the parts of this novel that are set in a Strand-like used bookstore . She does not like the parts that take place in the Nineteenth Century.

Although Hay tries to turn Melville and his friend Nathaniel Hawthorne into real characters through extensive quotations from their letters, these sections only intermittently crackle with life.

Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years, by David Talbot; Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F Kennedy, by Vincent Bugliosi. There are two distinct reviews here, presented on facing pages, each written by someone who agrees with the position taken by his author and therefore in both cases sympathetic. Alan Brinkley cheers Mr Talbot for continuing to dig out the conspiracy behind Lee Harvey Oswald, while Bryan Burrough praises Mr Bugliosi's tenacity - even if it does lead to a book of 1,612 pages.

Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America, 1789-1989, by Michael Beschloss. Mary Beth Norton begins her review by wondering just when "presidential historians" emerged from the pack of general historians. She doesn't say so, but her remarks made me think of books such as Mr Beschloss's as variants of books about hot chief executive officers in the world of business. Ms Norton goes on to suggest that a book cautioning "his readers to be wary of presidents whose actions could lead the nation in the wrong direction" would have been more useful.

No

These books, if they deserve coverage at all, ought to grace other sections of The New York Times.

The Religion, by Tim Willocks. By the time I got to the end of Susann Cokal's review of this swashbuckling novel, my jaw was flapping against my sternum. What was this book doing in the Review? Ms Cokal remarks at the end that the book has "few pretensions to high literature," but unless I'm missing something in her review, it doesn't have any.

7: The Mickey Mantle Novel, by Peter Golenbock. Ihsan Taylor is withering about this book, which, even had it been good, belongs somewhere else in the Times. Set in heaven, the novel posits that Mickey Mantle wants a tough sports journalist, Leonard Shecter, to make him confront his demons. Instead, the switch-hitter goes into frat-boy mode. My favorite line from the review is in the parenthesis:

The raunch piles up, and we forget that 7 is supposed to be about Mantle's soul-searching. (Shecter turns out to be a "hard-nosed" journalist in the same sense that Wile E Coyote is a predator.) Save for a few mawkish moments in the final pages, Mantle is a puzzlingly useless guide to his own emotions.

Mr Taylor wraps up his review with a modest list of better books for anyone interested in the Mantle mystery.

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When you figure out Benedict Carey's story, "This Is Your Life (and How You Tell It)", in today's Science Times, let me know.

Have you ever heard someone tell his life story in the third person? This is supposedly the healthy approach. Similarly, you're a more outgoing and generous person if you alienate your struggles, converting internal problems into "black dogs" and then vanquishing them.

All of this sounds like those studies showing that intelligence and self-estimation are inversely related. The smarter you are, the more likely you are to think that you're not smart (enough). Dumb people think they're geniuses.

Is health good for you?

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The music season is nearly over, which means that it's time to order tickets for next year. Last year, owing to the general unsteadiness of domestic affairs (Kathleen was looking for a new job), I didn't get round to ordering tickets until the fall, and so I didn't get everything that I wanted, and when I did get tickets, they weren't always the good seats that I prefer. I aim to do better this year; why, only yesterday, I renewed our Orpheus at Carnegie subscription. We've had seats T1 and T3 in the "prime parquet" - the orchestra - for years, except for two seasons when we were exiled to T5 and T7, as a penalty for having renewed very late. I'd like to move up a few rows, but I think that some sort of charitable donation will be required. T is fine, though, and we're on the left-hand side of the auditorium, which is always very important, as you can't see a pianist's hands if you're sitting on the right side.

My system, as it were, is to start with what I most want to hear and work my way down the list. I like to have one evening in Avery Fisher Hall - that's enough. I'm very fond of Zankel Hall; this past season, I attended baroque concerts there; next year, I'll be looking for something different. And then there's the Met, which has the advantage of being in the neighborhood. If there's something compelling at City Opera, I'll get a pair of tickets. I've only been to Alice Tully Hall once in my life, or maybe twice. It ought to be clear from this that, while I like to hear music in concert or recital, I don't want to do so too often, because overexposure is a terrible danger. I want every concert to be special in some way - special for me - and by and large that's what they are.

Ordering tickets last season, I decided that it was time to encounter the Jordi Savall phenomenon. Mr Savall is a Catalonian viola da gambist, which means he plays a cello-like instrument (only slightly smaller) that he supports on his legs. Most Europeans abandoned the instrument in the Seventeenth Century, but the French remained attached to it well into the following century. Mr Savall sometimes brings his early-music ensemble, Hesperion XXI, to town when he comes, but this year his brought only two colleagues, under the banner "Barcelona." I got a pair of tickets to the second of his two concerts at the Met, which finally came round the week before last.

Kathleen, busy as ever, was in no mood for a concert, but she decided to go anyway, just for the sane-making break; she has learned, moreover, that I don't get tickets for her if I doubt that she'd really enjoy the evening. (For this reason, I enjoy a lot of German chamber music by myself.) And she really did enjoy the evening - more than I did, in fact. I'm not sure why. I could tell that something quietly extraordinary was happening on stage, but I couldn't feel it. I'd love to say that I'm open to a wide variety of musical experiences, but it wouldn't be true. When I don't get something, though, I just leave it. There is no point in trying to figure out why you don't get something - because you don't get it! You might as well ask why you don't find a given popular movie star truly attractive. There's nothing wrong with the star and there's nothing wrong with you. Everybody can't like everything. I'm hammering at this because it's so obvious, and yet so hard to learn, and to accept.  

¶ Barcelona, at Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium.

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From Sarah Lyall's story in today's Times, "Gay Britons Serve in Military With Little Fuss, as Predicted Discord Does Not Occur":

Some Britons said they could not understand why the United States had not changed its policy.

“I find it strange, coming from the land of the free and freedom of speech and democracy, given the changes in the world attitude,” said the gay squadron leader, who recently returned from Afghanistan. “It’s just not the issue it used to be.”

Ms Lyall notes that Britain was forced to adopt tolerance of gays in the military by the EU. Similarly, American courts have led the way toward implementing civil unions and gay marriage. What this suggests to me is that while voters may reject a progressive legislator, they don't get worked up about progressive developments.

What's that about? It's a matter - or mystery - of perception. Our judgments are heavily dependent on context. Voting for a pro-gay representative implies that the voter is also pro-gay (although Republicans are famous for their "hold my nose" discipline). Living next door to a gay couple doesn't imply anything.

Another story in today's paper, Adam Liptak's column, "Positive He's a Killer; Less Sure He Should Die," highlights the huge difference between the general and the particular. Americans are broadly (if lamentably) in favor of the death penalty - as a principal. But juries have been sentencing convicted criminals to death in greatly dwindling numbers. When it's up to you to decide whether somebody will live or die, your mind works differently. You might say that it works.

Thus the inherent worthlessness of polling. Calling up people at home is itself a problem. At home, people are "themselves," "relaxed," more likely to say the first thing that comes to mind. In other words, polling occurs in a context that incompatible with the deliberation required by participatory democracy.

More to the point, asking general questions about matters of no immediate concern might yield interesting, "disinterested" responses, but the answers are unlikely to to indicate what the responders would actually do if doing something were necessary. I'm reminded of the old joke about how the man in the family makes all the important decisions - who's president, how to fight a war, and whether taxes are too high - while his wife takes care of the little stuff - where the family lives, what it eats, and how it's clothed.

"It's just not the issue it used to be."

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Not too long ago, I bought a copy of Norah Vincent's Self-Made Man, because I thought that Kathleen ought to know how ordinary men behave when there aren't any women around. I ended up reading the book first, and in one captivated day (I did nothing else). I expected a book about the adventures of passing as a man, but that's not what Ms Vincent wrote. As she herself says, passing was the easy part. The hard part was learning how tough life is for most guys. The alleged power and privilege of belonging to the dominant gender seems to be nothing more than smoke; in actuality, men are crippled by stoic homophobia on the one hand and the unrealistic expectations of women on the other. Ms Vincent was very surprised to find where her sympathies lay, and, when she recovered from the experiment, she was very happy to be a woman.

¶ Self-Made Man.

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This evening, battling flattening fatigue (I had to pry Kathleen from her fleece nap blanket at five-thirty in the afternoon), we very irresponsibly took a taxi all the way down to Chelsea for a housewarming. Our friend, Rob, moved into his studio in January, but almost immediately went on one of his South American junkets, including a quick trip to Antarctica, and didn't even start to unpack until about a month ago. The apartment has great views of the towers of Wall Street. Five floors higher, the building's roof offered even better views, and in three hundred sixty degrees. The weather was perfect, and we wished that we'd brought our cameras. The Razr, trust me, didn't do the views justice.

That was cool. But what was really cool was meeting a movie star. Okay, maybe not a star star. But a very nice guy, the Uruguayan actor Marcos Cohen, who landed an interesting small part in Robert De Niro's The Good Shepherd, the Guatemalan planter, Dr Ibanez. You will recall that Dr Ibanez's plantation is devastated by CIA-launched beetles in order to punish the man for his independent stance. Marcos was still buzzing from having landed the part, which made him big news in his native country. Kathleen asked him about working with Mr De Niro, and Marcos's answer was very positive, although he did say that the famous actor is "shy."

Kathleen also wanted me to tell you how great Rob's studio is. And it is great, so far. He has painted the main room almost exactly the same deep blue shade that gave our blue room its name in 1983, and his foyer, in a tribute to our apartment, is painted teal (although we're closer to evergreen). The only thing that remains is to furnish the place. We advised Rob to start off with the purchase of a good comfortable upholstered armchair.

After the party, we even more irresponsibly took a taxi to the Brasserie. We will never get over the original Brasserie, but it must be acknowledged that the current incarnation offers truly excellent frites. Kathleen discovered this at a recent birthday lunch. I only wish that I could have eaten them all. But the accompanying burger was enormous.

Here's hoping that you had a nice weekend, too.

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As a rule, I stay away from horror/slasher flicks. Who needs to have all that gore sloshing around in one's imagination? I'm familiar with the argument that these films provide young men with a ritual opportunity to display their unflinching bravery while girlfriends burrow into their shoulders with awestruck admiration. I'd have flunked. I well remember going to the men's room seven times (at least) when I saw Alien, in Nashua, New Hampshire, in 1979.

But Severance attracted me for two reasons. One, Toby Stephens. Mr Stephens is the son of Maggie Smith, but I didn't know he existed until I rented a video about the late Princess Margaret, The Queen's Sister. Mr Stephens plays Anthony Armstrong-Jones, Lord Snowdon. I've since read that he prefers the stage to the screen. If that's actually the case, then his participation in Severance is hard to explain.

Or perhaps it isn't. Severance is a first-class satire that is long on menace and short on actual horror. If it were a porn movie, you wouldn't see anybody's privates. A great deal is left to the imagination, which, in my case, certainly rose to the occasion. I was glued to my seat, however, because the movie is also very funny.

The second draw was basic: an eleven-o'clock screening at the Angelika. Once I leave Yorkville, the Angelika is the easiest theatre to get to in all of New York. (The 86th Street East, across the street from my apartment, is showing Shrek III on all four screens. What's one to do?)

I still can't believe that I went to see Severance.

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This just in.

NEW YORK - a public school teacher was arrested today at JFK International Airport as he attempted to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a set square, a slide rule and a calculator.

At a morning press conference, the Attorney General said he believes the man is a member of the notorious Al-Gebra movement. He did not identify the man, who has been charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of math instruction.

"Al-Gebra is a problem for us", the Attorney General said. "They desire solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in search of absolute values. They use secret codes names like 'x' and 'y' and refer to themselves as 'unknowns', but we have determined they belong to a common denominator of the Axis of Medians with coordinates in every country

As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, "There are 3 sides to every triangle."

When asked to comment on the arrest, President Bush said, "if God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes." White House Aides told reporters they could not recall a more intelligent or profound statement by the President.

(Thanks, Fossil Darling.)

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Until yesterday afternoon, I was going to write about Peter Hessler's immensely intriguing article about "The Great Wall of China," which, it should come as no surprise to anyone by now, is a Western construct. There is no "Great Wall." There are walls, here and there, but they are not continuous. What most people think of as "The Great Wall" is properly known as "The Ming Wall," because it was built by that late-medieval dynasty to protect Beijing, where the Ming emperors were installed in the Forbidden City (the Ming carried Chinese xenophobia to new and startling heights).

There is no body of academic scholars anywhere devoted to studying the Ming Wall. It has been left to amateurs, the most eminent of which - unbeknownst to many of the Chinese who also study the wall - is an American, David Spindler. Spindler, in the mid-Nineties was awarded a Master's Degree from Beijing University for his work on an ancient Chinese philosopher, Dong Zhongshu; after that, he went through Harvard Law and then worked for McKinsey & Company in Beijing. Now he just walks the wall. Quixotists will want to know about him. (Mr Hessler's piece is not on-line.)

Then, however, I read Michael Tomasky's piece in the current New York Review.

¶ Michael Tomasky on the Hope for Political Discourse, in The New York Review of Books.

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I always knew that Richard Snow would do something interesting. He was by far the cleverest kid in the class during my three years at Bronxville School. He wasn't a friend, exactly, but the friend of a friend, and I saw a fair amount of him. He was the first genuinely witty person that I ever knew, and I learned early to keep my own mouth shut when Richard was around. It was difficult to avoid his intentions entirely, however, as I was already one of the tallest guys in the class and he among the shortest.

Of course, I wish I'd found out what Richard has been up to all these years in happier circumstances. It appears that American Heritage, the Forbes publication that took on Richard in 1965, in the mail room, and of which he is currently the editor, is about to suspend publication. That's sad news, especially as the magazine has as many subscribers these days as it has ever had, if not more.

He said he was still unsure of his own fate, but if need be he could go back to writing historical novels. "I've written four," he said. "Two were loathed by everyone who read them, but two actually got published." And no matter what happens, he has worked out a crucial point in his severance. He gets to keep his Royal manual typewriter.

"That was the typewriter that I was assigned to in 1970, and it will follow me to the gave," he said, and he added, "I wish this were more a sign of granitic stability, but in fact it's a sign of my computer incompetence. I use it just to type labels, but it works beautifully. Every year somebody comes in and cleans in. I don't think he's paid by Forbes. He's some spectral presence who just turns up."

Good luck, Richard!

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In which we have a look at this week's New York Times Book Review.

Dr Jerome Groopman is everywhere these days, even writing this week's Essay, "Prescribed Reading." Dr Groopman teaches a literature class to undergraduates at Harvard College, and the syllabus includes a number of books that, in the doctor's view, have strong Biblical resonances. The astounding final sentence of the final paragraph is really very depressing, although Dr Groopman certainly didn't intend it to be so.

Some of the students will go on and become doctors, others journalists and teachers, mathematicians and financiers. All will one day be patients. They will then consult clinical textbooks or the Internet to learn about their disease, and some may also turn to self-help books. But it is in literature that they will find the sharpest revelations about the dilemmas of physicians and the yearnings of a patient's soul. And, for believer and atheist alike, the Bible should be a book to turn to.

If there's one thing I have no use for, it's the wisdom the ages in general and the wisdom of the Bible - a very nasty book - in particular. See God Is Not Great, below.

Yes

The following titles appear to deserve coverage in the Book Review. The reviews may still be inadequate or useless.

The Yiddish Policeman's Union, by Michael Chabon. Terrence Rafferty's enthusiastic review keeps the storytelling under control while writing extensively about the novel's literary qualities. About the novelist, he writes,

He has in recent years become a zealous proselytizer for a more genre-inflected and plot-friendly sort of literary fiction, a rabbi of the sect of Story. I think, though, that for him plot is like chess, no more and no less that a beautiful game, something to be played as scrupulously and passionately as you can, but warily - with an eye to the danger that the game could start playing you. When that happens, and you find yourself in that forced-to-move trap, the sensible thing is to knock the board over.

God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, by Christopher Hitchens. Michael Kinsley, declaring his own non-believer status, praises this book for its passion as well as for its lucidity. "He has written, with tremendous brio and great wit, but also with an underlying genuine anger, an all-out attack on all aspects of religion." Marveling that Mr Hitchens's rightward drift has not culminated in his being born again, Mr Kinsley concludes.

Speaking of foxes, Hitchens has outfoxed the Hitchens watchers by writing a serious and deeply felt book, totally consistent with his beliefs of a lifetime. And God should be flattered: unlike most of those clamoring for his attention, Hitchens treats him as an adult.

Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America, by Cullen Murphy. Walter Isaacson praises this bold attempt to scare Americans into acting sensibly. Whether the book will be read by the Americans who need scaring is open to question, as Mr Isaacson indirectly suggests. 

Occasionally Murphy seems to overstretch his analogies or to treat America as if it were a society as distant and curious as ancient Rome. His erudite book occasionally feels like something written from the aloof perch of the Boston Athenaeum Library, which it indeed was, rather than from firsthand observations of a Rotary Club meeting in the Midwest or an American Army base in the Middle East. Nevertheless, Murphy's arguments, even when they fail to be convincing, are thought-provoking.

John Donne: The Reformed Soul, by John Stubbs. Thomas Mallon calls this book a "vivid new biography" in his second paragraph and then pretty much forgets about the book until the final paragraph, telling instead the interesting story of John Donne's career. What he does say about the book seems helpful.

[Stubbs] sets a lively, plausible scene and sustains a high level of exactitude and style in his phrasing. His book has juice and, best of all, a kind of fearlessness in approaching the "frequently convoluted" emotions of a poet who possessed, if not English literature's greatest imagination, quite possibly its greatest intellect.

Maybe

It is difficult to tell whether these books are actually as indifferent or pointless as the reviews suggest.

Some of Tim's Stories, by S E Hinton. Stephanie Zacharek's review has me stumped. Take this passage, for example:

In a series of interviews that make up the second half of the book, Hinton explains that the "Tim" of the title is the writer of these stories. "Mike" is Tim's thinly disguised alter ego, a guy who can't stop punishing himself for the ways in which he might have failed his cousin. 

What is meant by "the second half of the book"? Are the interviews fictional? How might "Mike" have failed his cousin? Ms Zacharek gets lost in a long view of Ms Hinton's career, and if it weren't for the fact that "Mike" is a bartender, one might even wonder if this book is aimed at the younger people who are Ms Hinton's customary readers.

The Big Girls, by Suzanna Moore. Stacey D'Erasmo's review gets off to a bad start with the claim that "The women-in-prison genre, even at its most blatantly exploitative, can't escape the political." It is very hard to get a sense of Ms Moore's fiction within the review's social-problem orientation.

Imposture, by Benjamin Markovits. Jess Row writes somewhat condescendingly about this historical novel, which centers on a doctor who "passes" for Lord Byron. Mr Row is unexcited by the novel's treatment of the alter ego, and writes, "It captures the morbidity of Polidori's fascination with Byron but not the thrill of being in the poet's presence, which is like reading Kurt Cobain's diaries without ever having heard the first four chords of 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'."

Angelica, by Arthur Phillips. Andrew Sean Greer's review begins by labeling this novel a "pastiche." He doesn't say what he means by that, however, and unless he means to be a synonym for hommage or imitation, he's got me stumped. All I can make out is that Mr Greer's pastiche is always weaker and less arresting than whatever inspired it. To this muddle he adds some garbled storytelling. It's as though he couldn't tell whether his review ought to be longer or very much shorter. Mr Phillips deserves better.

The New Yorkers, by Cathleen Schine; illustrated by Leanne Shapton. Liesl Schillinger seems to like this book, which would appear to be largely about pet dogs, but she refers rather fatally to its "paper-doll characters." Noting that Ms Schine's previous fiction has been anchored on strong central characters, Ms Schillinger writes,

But here, her characters - with the exception of a brother and sister who share an apartment - are an unconnected group of people who have been nudged into a herd by one another's pets, and are striking chiefly in their unremarkableness. Not particularly good at playing with others, they are socialized by four-footed companions that serve as fairy godmothers to these contemporary Cinderellas, who may not clean up too well but still deliver a fair shake.

Ghostwalk, by Rebecca Stott. Christopher Benfey writes favorably, overall, about this "mesmerizing first novel," but he pretty much nullifies his prase by calling it "upscale pulp" and making references to The Da Vinci Code.

How I Became A Nun, by César Aira (translated by Chris Andrews). I'm still scratching my head over Jascha Joffman's review, which states that the principal character in this Argentinean novel is a six year-old girl trapped in the body of a boy, also named César Aira.

On another level, though, César's ambitious delusions seem imposed by the author. Despite Chris Andrews's clear translation, Aira's prose seems hesitant, his imaginative flights clipped by the 6-year-old mind he is trying to inhabit. As a result, these perplexing episodes don't quite add up to a credible story.

A Handbook to Luck, by Cristina García. This book about three alienated characters in different parts of the world strikes Louisa Thomas as "jarring" and, evidently, uneven. Ms Thomas's storytelling only adds to the confusion.

One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding, by Rebecca Mead. Jodi Kantor believes that Ms Mead has gotten carried away.

Though she speaks of the entire wedding industry, Mead actually doesn't seem interested in celebrations like mine - which was on the tasteful side, if I do say so myself. Mead is so outraged by the gilded picture presented by bridal magazines that she overcorrects and gives us a book full of tawdry, tacky affairs, where the dresses are ill-fitting, the officiant is a hired gun, and the couple flushes away more than they can afford. ... In other words, Mead has reduced the American wedding to its cheesiest and most venal elements, and then written a book about how cheesy and venal American weddings are.

Kinfolks: Falling Off the Family Tree: The Search for My Melungeon Ancestors, by Lisa Alther. Katherine Dieckman's review is notably unsympathetic. Of Ms Alther's genealogical effort, she writes,

This should be fascinating, but Alther is too besotted with the vagaries of her own experience, and her attempts at cleverness fall flat. Her frequent readings from outdoor church signs ("Come On In and Join Out Prophet-Sharing Plan") grow as wearisome as her antsy digressions. Occasionally there's the verve of her earlier prose, but clunkers abound. "This project, undertaken with such enthusiasm, is proving as never-ending as Cher's farewell tour.

(More about Melungeons here.)

East Wind Melts the Ice: a Memoir Through the Seasons, by Lisa Dalby. Dana Goodyear's review makes it difficult to imagine why anybody would want to read this book.

As a writer, Dalby makes similarly improbable and attention-getting choices. "I would rather skin a dead raccoon than shove a sharp hook up the anus of a pitifully thrashing Lumbricus terrestris," she writes, when what she means to communicate is that she dislikes using worms when she's fishing.

Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power, by Robert Dallek. Mark Atwood Lawrence writes generally favorably about this doorstopper, but in one paragraph suggests to me that I'd do best not to add it to my pile.

Dallek's attention to personalities makes Nixon and Kissinger remarkably engaging for a 700-page study of policy making. But this emphasis also underlies its chief weakness: the implication that the foreign policy devised by Nixon and Kissinger lacked intellectual coherence. Curiously, Dallek fails to describe at any length the rapidly shifting geostrategic landscape that confronted the Nixon administration as it entered office in 1969 - above all, the relative decline of American power due to the Vietnam War and the Soviet Union's attainment of nuclear parity with the United States.

Put another way, this sounds like dumbed-down history, all personality and no context.

No

These books, if they deserve coverag