The Grouchy Editor

by Evelyn Waugh

There’s no question that Evelyn Waugh was a gifted writer. You could open Brideshead Revisited to page 51, or to page 352, have no clue about the plot or context, and still enjoy Waugh’s prose. The man was smooth and entertaining.

On the downside, I was a bit disappointed by Brideshead’s plot, in which a Nick Carraway-like narrator is befriended by a family of wealthy Catholics in 1920s England. The most interesting family member, alcoholic man-child Sebastian, is the focus of much of the story until he is abruptly dropped about two-thirds into the novel. The other family members are just mildly intriguing. Also, Waugh’s themes of religion and the vanishing British aristocracy are somewhat dated. But if you simply enjoy good writing, here you go.

© 2010-2026 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

by Kurt Vonnegut

I like short stories just fine, thank you. I like to read them and (gasp!) I like to write them. My favorite Stephen King story, for example, isn’t one of his famed novels; it’s a haunting little gem called “The Last Rung on the Ladder,” which can be found in the King collection Night Shift. But short stories have an obvious downside: They are often too short. Too … slight. It’s like having one bite of juicy shrimp and then being told you can’t have any more.

Kurt Vonnegut is one of my favorite writers. The stories in Monkey are from his early years (1950s-1960s), so some of them feel dated, and others feel like the product of a young, unpolished writer. But none of them are dull and many of them are thought-provoking. They are the literary equivalent of a TV show of that same era, The Twilight Zone – stories with a moral, often humorous, and frequently laced with Vonnegut’s favorite genre, science fiction.

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by Gay Talese

I’m thinking the title of this book should really be “Rationalization.” Its subject, a peeping Tom from Colorado named Gerald Foos, rationalized his perverted pastime by telling himself he was a sex researcher, in the mode of Masters and Johnson, documenting his motel guests’ sexual proclivities in the name of behavioral science. The book’s author, Gay Talese, rationalized writing about Foos because he’s a journalist and he thought the middle-aged motel owner was an intriguing subject. I rationalized reading The Voyeur’s Motel because Talese is a respected, renowned writer.

I assume you are reading this review because you wonder what I think about what Talese thinks about what Foos thought about his guests while he crouched in the attic of the Manor House Motel, peering through a ceiling vent and taking copious notes – and frequently masturbating.

Well … whatever. I’m afraid Foos’s lurid diary comes off as less Kinsey Report, more Playboy Report, as we read his descriptions of one sleazy motel-room encounter after another.

But I learned a lot. That’s my rationalization.

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by Jonathan Franzen

Confession: I’ve resisted this book for years, in part because its author, Jonathan Franzen, has a reputation (deserved or not) for being something of a jerk. He’s not exactly Mr. Warmth and Cheer on his talk-show appearances, and then there was that little issue with Oprah Winfrey.

Also, reviews informed me that The Corrections’ plot concerns a middle-class family of five in the late-twentieth-century Midwest, with Depression-era parents and grown kids who flew the coop. I happen to hail from a middle-class family of five in the late-twentieth-century Midwest, with Depression-era parents and grown kids who flew the coop. I thought the book might hit a little too close to home, and so I took a pass.

My mistake.

Franzen is a spectacularly gifted writer. His insights and prose are endlessly inventive. He deftly mixes elements of Shakespearean tragedy with humor straight out of Kurt Vonnegut. He chooses the perfect word, the perfect phrase to illustrate his scenes. The major theme, in which members of The Greatest Generation and The Me Generation collide with societal change and with each other, is important to many Americans. National Book Award voters honored The Corrections in 2001, and justifiably so.

However … this was a novel that I admired more than I enjoyed. The characters, although fully realized and recognizable, are not what I’d call endearing, and the reader is asked to spend 566 pages with them.  Unless you grew up in a family much like the Lamberts – (ahem) – The Corrections might engage your mind but not so much your soul.

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