You can get the whole idea of “Dirk Gently” and his so-called detective agency from one line. Referring to Sherlock Holmes’ famous precept that “once you eliminate the impossible, whatever’s left, however improbable, must be the truth” Dirk replies, “I prefer not to eliminate the impossible.” That’s a clever line, but also rather exasperating. That’s Dirk Gently, and this book, in a nutshell. I laughed quite a few times at some inspired bit of absurdity or an ingenious turn of phrase, but mostly I found […]
I Ain’t No Senator’s Son
When an escapee from the state mental hospital knocks on his door late at night, divorced ex-cop Lew Archer finds himself suddenly entangled in a long-running family drama. Carl Hallman is the scion of a powerful state senator, locked up because he blamed himself for the deaths of his mother and father. When Archer convinces Hallman to turn himself in, the detective’s sense of curiosity gets the better of him, and when he asks one question he finds himself knocked out on the floor and […]
The Corrupting Effects of Sivilization
Do you remember how the last third of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn made you hate Tom Sawyer? Well, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Robert Coover takes Mark Twain’s iconic characters, ages them about 30 years, places them in Deadwood just before America’s centennial, and uses them to expose the ignorance, violence and cruelty at the heart of America’s westward expansion. If The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was mostly an adventure story for boys, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn a story of the loss […]
Must Read TV
One of the foremost pleasures of reading Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz’s exhaustive list of the greatest American TV is getting confirmation that there are people out there who watch way more TV than you. From their childhoods spent in front of television sets to their jobs as critics at the Newark Star-Ledger through to their current online prominence, Sepinwall and Seitz have as much claim as anyone to authoritatively state that they know which shows are best. TV (The Book) mainly takes the […]
By the Light of the Silvery Moon
Michael Chabon is no stranger to strangeness. His novels are a cavalcade of oddballs and unusual circumstances, from the relocated Jews in Alaska of Yiddish Policeman’s Union to the comic-book artists of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. His latest opus may seem from a logline to be a more conventional offering, but in structure and detail it is just as unusual as any of his other novels. The novel purports itself to be a memoir of a writer named Michael Chabon learning his […]
Life Aboard the Busted Flush
Travis McGee will confound your expectations. An unlikely hero for a detective novel, or any kind of novel at that, John D. MacDonald’s most famous creation is a man who has figured himself out. All it takes for him to be completely happy is a quiet life about his houseboat, the Busted Flush, with good food, good drink, and some occasional female companionship on his terms. To finance this life of Reilly, McGee takes work only when he has to, and it’s an odd line […]
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