Thursday, August 11, 2005

Literary Tastes
On the beach this summer as I toiled up and down pushing the baby in her stroller, I made a point of checking covers of books read by people I passed. Almost all of them were 'beach books', i.e. soupy-gooey romance fiction. Some were texts. A rare few were heavy duty literature. One was a book of the type I like...an adventure. The man showing me this book seemed ashamed of it and blamed its choice on his daughter who had forced the book on him, a gift to take on his vacation. Well, I was at the beach for a long time but I read exactly nothing.

Having unpacked my beach stuff, having grocery shopped, having looked around to assure myself that all is pretty much OK here at home, I am now in mid book binge. Last night I read two and a half. The first, Just One Look, by Harlan Coben, is very good. The 383 PP. flew by in record time. The second was obviously produced after rewrites, sweat, toil...all that showed, but it was OK...The Confession by Sidney Siegel. The third is by Jack Higgins and is per his formula, Blind Justice, but entertaining. There is no particular substance to this book, nothing to linger over, nothing expecially savory, so I'll be done in a short while. I've saved the best for last. Haven't read it yet, but I'm sure it's going to be great...the new John LeCarre book.

In my opinion, the three greats of English literature in the twentieth century were/are...
1)P.G. Wodehouse. Pure entertainment, but just way beyond great. If you start a line from any of his books, I can finish it for you. I reread his stories until I literally wore the books to death.
2) Evelyn Waugh.Immensely entertaining but also full of agenda. Cartoons though they were, I feel that I know each of his characters and would recognize them if I were to see them somewhere. All the faces of the human condition are there.
3)John LeCarre. Not to be dismissed as a spy story writer. This author is as heavy duty a purveyor of morality as was John Milton and infinitely more readable.

I suppose that fashions in writers are as changeable as fashions in clothing design. Right now America sits at the feet of Oprah and what she recommends, sells. She was, for a while, all worked up about that Latin American writer Gabriel Marquez (SP?), particularly the book, One Hundred Years of Solitude. After endless, fanatical encomiums of praise heaped on the book by just about everyone I knew, I eventually read it and wondered if all the recommenders were out of their minds. Silly, silly book that should have ended 200 pages before it did. All that South American drunk priests and humble people on donkeys stuff was done much better by Graham Greene. Oh, yes, and John LeCarre did it better in The Tailor Of Panama, felicitously, brilliantly better.

So...I'm going to hustle through the Jack Higgins Book and then go on to dessert; Absolute Friends, by John LeCarre. Yippee.

Posted by doubledog at 10:39 AM | Post Comment | View Comments (2) | Permalink
Updated: Thursday, August 11, 2005 10:40 AM

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