Since it’s been a while since the Lit part of Lit-Ideas has waddled to the
fore, allow me to recommend a book. It came out in 1993—pretty much just
yesterday as far as I’m concerned, but that’s a codger’s view of time—so
there’s a chance you’ve already ready it. I place it in that category of
humorous writing that began in my consciousness with Clive James and continues
in the present with Guardian’s Barney Ronay: the critic as wit. You will write
in and tell me I’ve got my dates wrong; the category was truly begun by Ezekial
of Gaza a couple of hundred years before Jesus. Boy was he good on burning
bushes and the like.
(Barney Ronay writes about football, which is not everyone’s cup of tea, but
read him and you’ll see).
The title of this book is, “Nobody’s Perfect,” and the author who wrote the
book is Anthony Lane. (Can you tell I’ve been reading student papers?)
What’s interesting about reviews of movies that long ago passed from view? And
reconsiderations of Evelyn Waugh, Bloom on Shakespeare, A.E. Houseman? The
book is exhibit one in favor of having literature on a phone or small
electronic device. No piece takes more than a few minutes to read; each repays
with a smile or titter. Sometimes the payoff is something to ponder while you
walk away from the bus or train.
A sample? Lane twice takes on the task of reviewing all the books on an
outdated bestseller list. Here, from 1942, are the final lines of the section
on “Earth and High Heaven,” by Gwenthalyn Graham. (Full disclosure: he
mentions P.G.Wodehouse earlier in the piece, which is a stratagem generally
likely to cause bias in this writer). His beef with “Earth and High Heaven” is
that it’s a polemic lightly disguised as a novel, a thought that causes an
aphorism to be born “…the best intentions have a nasty habit of breeding the
worst art.” A good critic, Lane shows you exactly what he means and where he
finds strength or flaw happening. “Hence those delightful moments when the
polemic stops and a tiny, hopeless scrap of stage business starts up, does its
stuff, and dies. Here is Marc [a Jew, describing his own experience] in full
flow: ‘Even when people don’t dislike you, even when they really like you, you
still make them feel slightly self-conscious, I don’t know why. Maybe it’s
just because they’ve been brought up to regard Jews as ‘different.’ Do you
want a biscuit?’"
David Ritchie,
Portland,
Oregon------------------------------------------------------------------
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