- David Denby, Snark -- A very fine book. See my Update to the post on "Snark" earlier this month.
- Charlotte Bronte, Shirley -- Of the novels I've read in my current 19th century fiction project, this is the one that derails most badly near the end, after a promising start. The whole "third volume" is a mess, hampered by the late introduction of a crucial but poorly realized character, Louis Moore. Bronte apparently wept over the reviews, which is not a pleasing image, but she does set herself up for it; I would love to know if she thought out the plot, because the novel seems to be a "compose as you go" affair, with minor characters and sub-plots introduced but never followed through. Charles Reade's It Is Never Too Late to Mend, which I read earlier in the project, is oddly constructed, but not badly constructed, and Reade pulls it all together with ebullience at the end. Reade is a professional novelist of the second rank; Charlotte Bronte is an amateur novelist of the first rank.
- Harry J. Maihafer, Oblivion: The Disappearance of West Point Cadet Richard Cox -- I'm on a missing persons kick, and Cox's still unexplained disappearance from West Point in 1950 is particularly baffling as these things go. Maihafer reports exhaustively on the researches of amateur sleuth Marshall Jacobs. The book is very strong on facts, and on descriptions of the frustrations of false leads; but the theories Jacobs comes up with are weak (in part because some of the "evidence" he accepts is not strong), and the conclusion of the book, with a "Deep Throat" figure emerging to explain all, cannot be trusted without more specifics. The tone of the book is remarkably similar to that of Fred Goerner's 1966 The Search for Amelia Earhart, another compelling read that (probably) is barking up the wrong tree.
Breakfast is being served
3 years ago
