The Grouchy Editor

by J.D. Vance

I can’t explain why, but J.D. Vance remains something of an enigma to me. Netflix produced a movie based on this book, and I watched it. I also follow politics, so I’ve witnessed Vance’s rise from obscure politician to vice president of the United States. And now I’ve read this autobiography, the book that brought Vance to national prominence.

And yet, I have a tough time saying what I think of the man. His resume is certainly impressive. But what really makes him tick?

Hillbilly Elegy chronicles Vance’s life in the hills of Kentucky and in southern Ohio, from his childhood to early adulthood. It was a rough upbringing. For a kid like Vance to not only survive “hillbilly” culture, but to go on to bigger and better things (Marine, Yale Law School, and a little thing called the vice presidency) is borderline miraculous.

Vance’s description of his family life is absorbing. But he comes off somewhat detached from relatives and all the lower-middle-class chaos he endured. Maybe it’s this detachment that serves him so well in politics — and which makes him such a tough egg to crack.

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by Gypsy Rose Lee

I was in the mood for a curiosity, so I read Mother Finds a Body, by Gypsy Rose Lee. What and Who? you might ask.

Lee was America’s most famous burlesque-and-striptease star of the mid-20th century. She penned a memoir titled Gypsy, which became a musical play and a 1962 movie with Natalie Wood and Rosalind Russell. Oh, and she wrote two murder mysteries, including this one.

I consider murder-mystery novels written by famous strippers to be a “curiosity.”

The plot:  A handful of comics and dancers traveling east with a trailer make a pit stop in Ysleta, Texas, and discover a body under the bed in their mobile home.

If you’ve watched any screwball comedies from the 1930s, what ensues is very much like those. Lots of tough talk, quaint jargon, and quirky characters.

Like one of Lee’s costumes during her act, there’s not a lot of material here — but it’s an enjoyable watch.

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by Kurt Vonnegut

“Your government does not exist and should not exist in order to keep you or anybody else, no matter what color, no matter what race, no matter what religion, from getting your damn fool feelings hurt.” — Kurt Vonnegut

In the quote above, from a speech Vonnegut delivered in 2000, the celebrated author is not hectoring a gathering of liberal “snowflakes.” He is defending his right to criticize … Thomas Jefferson.

Vonnegut is possibly my favorite writer because of his style. He makes a ponderable point, then confesses that his conclusion might be wrong. His humility and self-deprecation make you want to ponder that ponderable point.

The book is a collection of Vonnegut speeches from the 1970s to the early 2000s.  Vonnegut died in 2007. I miss his wit. And his ponderable points.

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by Mark Bauerlein

Today is November 5, 2024, election day, and the nation is holding its collective breath to find out who gets to run the country for the next four years (or more).

I suppose I read The Dumbest Generation Grows Up (dumb title) in part to gird myself, because the titular Millennials could well decide whether we get Kamala Harris or Donald Trump. If they do, Bauerlein’s pessimistic book doesn’t give me much hope for the future.

The book, a follow-up to Bauerlein’s 2008 survey of this age group (which I haven’t read), paints an unpleasant picture. Millennials, he writes, were coddled by Boomers and left to their own devices (literally and figuratively) by their mentors — specifically, college professors. The result is millions of young adults who scroll smartphones but know nothing about Shakespeare, Dickens, or Dostoevsky — all of them dead, white males, of course, and therefore unworthy of study.

Bauerlein contrasts this cohort of woke “utopians” with Malcolm X. The latter, he points out, had good reason to find fault with Western Civilization but, rather than simply dismiss it as evil, studied it so that he could make intelligent arguments.

Young people today don’t do that because it’s too difficult.

It’s possible we’ll learn tomorrow how the Millennials voted, and in what kind of numbers. God help all of us.

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by Richard Osman

Here’s the thing about “cozy” mysteries: If they are too cozy, they lose their edge. And then you have a bland reading experience.

The Thursday Murder Club walks the fine line between warm and fuzzy — with a few dark passages — and watching an episode of, oh, I don’t know, The Golden Girls, perhaps? There are some chuckles to be had, but not much depth to the characters.

The plot follows four lovable senior citizens living in a retirement village who attempt to solve crimes. For fun. To me, the elderly sleuths were pleasant enough, but not terribly interesting. The mystery is likewise underwhelming.

I notice that they are making a movie out of this novel (the first in a series by Osman), starring Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley, and Celia Imrie. Judging from that cast, I’m thinking this might be one time when the movie could be better than the book.

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by Colin Dexter

Nothing against Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Sam Spade, or any of the hundreds of private dicks, sleuths, and cops in crime fiction, but my favorite of them all is probably Dexter’s Inspector Morse.

Like so many deductive heroes of these novels, Morse is blessed with genius. But he is also cursed by a nettlesome romantic life — or lack thereof. He loves his pints of beer. He also has an (often lecherous) eye for the ladies.

Alas, said ladies are generally just beyond Morse’s grasp, either because they are murdered, or shipped off to jail, or subject to some other calamity.

The Dead of Jericho begins with Morse meeting such a woman and ends with him reflecting about her. There is a mystery to solve, of course, but it’s the melancholic tone of the book that haunts the reader.

We have every confidence that our irascible protagonist will solve the case. But will Morse ever find love?

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by David Grann

A few weeks ago, I watched a YouTube video featuring amazing images of Mars that have been transmitted back to Earth. The high-definition pictures of the red planet’s barren landscapes held my interest for 15 minutes or so — and then it was time to move on to the next video. I’d seen enough.

Perhaps I’ve become jaded, or I’ve watched too many science-fiction movies.

It’s easy to forget how, for most of history, exploration was a rock-star pursuit that riveted the world. Long before YouTube, or even television, newspaper accounts of adventurers like Percy Fawcett mesmerized readers all over the globe.

David Grann (Killers of the Flower Moon) spent years researching the life, legend and disappearance of Fawcett, a British explorer who entered the Amazon basin in 1925 with two other expedition members — hoping to confirm the existence of the titular “Z” — and then never came back.

Did the Fawcett party fall victim to disease or to predators? Did a hostile tribe kill them? Grann’s exhaustive research (and even a trip to the Amazon, hoping to retrace Fawcett’s final excursion) fails to provide definitive answers.

That’s a problem. By the book’s conclusion, we still don’t know what became of the enigmatic, obsessed (I might say “bull-headed”) explorer. Nor, despite Grann’s best efforts and imagination, do we get conclusive answers about the mythical “city of Z.”

By the time I turned the last page, I was impressed by Grann’s achievement. I was intrigued by Fawcett and his exploits. But unlike those newspaper readers of a century ago, I was not enthralled.

I was ready for the next YouTube video.

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by Robert B. Parker

When you think about it, celebrated gun-for-hire Spenser isn’t all that great at his job. In A Savage Place, Spenser flies out to Hollywood to function as bodyguard-helper to a TV reporter investigating mob ties to the movie industry.

In the end, things don’t work out so well for the reporter. Nor do they for Spenser.

But that’s not what Parker’s Spenser books are about. They are about the Boston tough guy’s self-deprecating wisecracks, and about his wry observations of people and places. What, for example, does a hardened egg like Spenser think about the “beautiful people” of 1980s L.A.? Will he charm his way into the sexy reporter’s bed? Does a bear shit in Beverly Hills?

I don’t think this is one of the better books in the Spenser series. The “white knight does his part to serve feminism” theme feels a bit forced. Also, the damsel in distress isn’t particularly likeable.

But the wisecracks are on cue, and so are the action scenes.

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by C.S. Lewis

Wikipedia describes British intellectual Lewis as a “Christian apologist.” Really? Maybe I’m misinterpreting the term, but it doesn’t seem to me that Lewis’s writings do much “apologizing” for Christianity.

But I digress. In The Screwtape Letters, Lewis plays devil’s advocate — literally — through “Screwtape,” a high-ranking demon and advisor to his nephew “Wormwood,” a novice demon attempting to corrupt a young Englishman. In a series of letters to the nephew, Screwtape details the tricks of their trade: how to plant ungodly thoughts in an individual’s head, and then how to encourage those thoughts to flourish.

This is accomplished chiefly by appealing to the Englishman’s vanities, fears, etc., and then finding ways to justify his delusions. The great Enemy to Screwtape (and Wormwood) is, of course, Christianity.

Lewis said that he found the writing of Screwtape Letters to be “easy,” but also unpleasant. It’s not hard to see why. Like a film actor who enjoys playing villains on screen, it was probably fun to play-act Satan’s assistant. And yet, there are so many depressing aspects to human nature — so many pitfalls to being a good person — that you might not want to dwell in that role for very long.

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by Ayn Rand

If I read this Ayn Rand novella just 10 years ago, my reaction to it might have gone something like this: “Interesting. Far-fetched, but interesting.”

The dystopian world Rand creates in her story depicts a society in which totalitarian collectivism rules. The protagonist is a confused soul living in a city where nothing is done — or even thought — by “I” or “me.” To do that is a crime. The only acceptable pronoun is “we.” People don’t have names; they are assigned numbers. Everyone follows, like docile sheep, the dictates of the “Council.”

Interesting, I would have thought in 2014. But people are not docile sheep, I would have thought, 10 years ago.

Flash forward to 2024, in which “he” and “she” are routinely replaced by “they,” and in which violating groupthink can cost you your livelihood. Individualism is dangerous because it threatens the well-being of the group, we are told.

I suspect the reason Anthem is not routinely cited with Brave New World and 1984 as warnings about the perils of — insert your “ism” here — is because Rand planned it in 1937 as a magazine article. It’s a very short novel. It doesn’t have the meat of 1984 or Brave New World. But it effectively conveys the same message.

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