The Grouchy Editor

A notorious outline for Jewish world domination, Protocols is generally dismissed as a fraud.  Scholars say that Jewish plotters, as implied by these “minutes,” did not secretly meet in the late 19th century, and that this book’s text was cobbled together from earlier material dreamed up by some anonymous instigator.  I don’t know that it matters whether the meeting was a complete fabrication.  What matters is that the ideas expressed in Protocols influenced everyone from Henry Ford to Adolf Hitler to Bobby Fischer – and those ideas continue to attract certain factions today.

The components of this preachy, vague publication (specifics are rarely mentioned) are well known:  Gentiles are sheep, an inferior people destined for manipulation and governance by the “chosen people.”  Jews will use their control of global finance, the press, and political puppets to sow discord and eventually rule the world.  You know, like what Hitler tried to do.

© 2010-2025 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

 by Jim Norton

Norton’s autobiographical essays belong in the “This Will Appeal Almost Exclusively to Emotionally Stunted Young Males” genre, right beside hormone-driven nonsense like Grant Stoddard’s Working Stiff and Tucker Max’s I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. 

What raises Happy Endings a notch above those other books is the fact that Norton (unlike Max) is an experienced writer and (unlike Stoddard) also a professional comedian.  He trots out the same type of raunchy anecdotes – extremely reliant on bodily apertures, gases, and fluids – but he knows how to turn a phrase for maximum comic effect.  A lot of this stuff is funny, but oh, man, those off-color stories ….  Bathroom humor is like the exclamation point:  It’s effective when used judiciously, but grows tiresome when overdone.  And Norton uses it relentlessly in Happy Endings.

© 2010-2025 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

by Benjamin Hale

The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore is narrated by a talking chimpanzee.  “Bruno” is not a very pleasant ape.  He has learned a lot of big words, and he loves to parade them.  Although he’s a regular-sized chimp and he’s plagued by insecurities, his ego is the size of King Kong and he feels superior to most primates – including humans.  Especially humans.  Does that sound like the kind of “hero” with whom you want to spend 576 pages?  At first, I didn’t think I wanted to, but I’m glad I hung in there with Bruno, because this book is an absolute knockout.  Hale, who is all of 27 years old (the bastard!), has written a debut novel that practically screams out, “Literature is not dead!”

Bruno is not without flaws.  There are times when the reader’s suspension of disbelief is sorely tested; this is, after all, a talking chimpanzee we’re asked to accept.  But the book works on so many levels:  unforgettable characters, penetrating insights about human nature; comedy and tragedy.   Mostly, it’s the irascible, disturbing Bruno himself that will stay with you – whether you want him to or not.

© 2010-2025 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

by Georges Simenon

When you plan a whodunit, there are certain unwritten rules you should obey.  You should not, for example, make your killer a minor, inconsequential character.  You also should not introduce him (or her) very late in the story.  If you violate those conventions, you are cheating the reader who is striving to discover “whodunit.” Simenon, famed mystery writer that he is, violates both rules in Maigret and the Man on the Boulevard.  That’s a strike against him.

Now that I’ve vented, let me add some praise.  Unlike in Agatha Christie stories, Simenon’s characters are three-dimensional, not recurring stereotypes.  The protagonist, police detective Maigret, gathers most of his clues through interrogations (much like Christie’s Poirot), but the suspects are gritty, colorful, and memorable – very often street toughs.  In short, Simenon is great with character and dialogue, but not so great with plot.  At least not in this book.

© 2010-2025 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

 by Frank Brady

If you are an undisputed champion in one area of life, does it necessarily follow that you are the master of everything else?  That seems to have been Bobby Fischer’s perspective – and downfall.

Brady, who knew the American chess master for most of Fischer’s life, had a tough task in compiling this biography.  Fischer wasn’t so much reclusive as he was abusive; cross him once, and he would erase you from his world.  That obstacle might explain why, fascinating though Endgame is, it leaves so many unanswered questions.  Why did Fischer have no meaningful relationships with women (other than his mother) until late in life?  Why was he declared unfit for the draft during Vietnam?  Who was his biological father?  Brady does capture Fischer’s volatile personality, including painful examples of his many anti-Semitic, anti-American, and anti-Soviet rants – along with other, what might kindly be called “eccentricities.”  Mostly, Endgame is a harrowing examination of the demands and pitfalls of celebrity.

© 2010-2025 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

by James Thurber

Thurber is a revered American humorist, but I thought this autobiographical collection of essays was hit-or-miss.  Some of the stories (“The Day the Dam Broke,” especially) were laugh-out-loud brilliant; others ranged from mildly amusing to forgettable.  Thurber, like a turn-of-the (20th)-century David Sedaris, chronicles the comic misadventures of his oddball family members, but too many of the stories simply end, with no real point or punch line.

© 2010-2025 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

by Jerzy Kosinski

Kosinski published this amusing dissection of pop culture’s influence on American life in 1971, back when remote controls and TVs in limousines were considered state-of-the-art luxuries.  But there is nothing dated about Kosinski’s novella Being There, which chronicles the fallout when a simple-minded gardener’s simple-minded pronouncements – many of them influenced by what he sees on television – are repeatedly mistaken for philosophical genius.

You have to wonder what the Polish-American Kosinski would make of “reality TV” in today’s world.  Chance the gardener, the author’s blank-slate antihero, would probably feel right at home on Big Brother.

© 2010-2025 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

by Washington Irving

I’ve often noticed while reading old books (pre-20th century), that two themes appear again and again:  travel on the high seas, and anything pertaining to food.  We tend to forget, in our modern supermarket lives, just how much of human history was devoted to the pursuit and preparation of something to eat.  But when we read these old books we are reminded.

“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” – along with “Rip Van Winkle,” Washington Irving’s most celebrated work – is a case in point.  Its depiction of Ichabod Crane’s ill-fated courtship of the maiden Katrina and the attack of the Headless Horseman is justifiably famous, but what struck me were the author’s loving, nearly idolatrous descriptions of food.  It’s notable that although the plot ostensibly concerns Crane’s efforts to woo Katrina, Irving’s most vivid passages are about her father’s table – and not the girl herself (although even she is described as desirably “plump,” as though she would look good beside the turkey on a platter).  Vegetarians must hate this story.

© 2010-2025 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

  by Agatha Christie

When I think of Agatha Christie, what comes to mind is an old English estate, with a murder or two, and a middle-aged (or elderly) sleuth on hand to unmask the villain.  In other words, I think of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple.  With Christie, what I do not think of are wild motorcar chases on country roads, gun battles on city streets, and government papers that could trigger war.  That’s Alfred Hitchcock material, or an Ian Fleming plot.  And that’s part of the problem with The Secret Adversary, Christie’s second novel.  The story is out of her comfort zone, not so much a mystery as a frantic spy thriller.  

There is a reason that Christie’s young protagonists in this and four more books, “Tommy and Tuppence,” never attained the popularity of Poirot and Marple.  They are an amusing couple, but their adventures are wildly improbable, they enjoy amazing good luck, and they happen upon extraordinary coincidences.  There is action galore – but too few “little grey cells.”

© 2010-2025 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

 by Charles Portis

I almost never read Westerns.  I think this is because some of the elements of Western life bore me.  I don’t really care about the difference between a Winchester and a Mauser, nor am I all that interested in horses, homesteads, and hangings.  But I’m beginning to think this oater aversion of mine is a mistake, because some of the best books I’ve read – in any genre – are Westerns.

I am referring to Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove, and I am referring to this book.  In both novels, the hook is the characters.  In True Grit, it’s the voice of one character in particular, 14-year-old Mattie Ross, who narrates the story.  Mattie, who never met a contraction she would not like to flatten, is a bible-thumping delight as she interacts with some of the roughest characters of the old West.  One critic said True Grit “captures the naïve elegance of the American voice,” and I think that sums up the humor Portis mines so well, using the indomitable Mattie as his catalyst.

© 2010-2025 grouchyeditor.com (text only)