Was 2023 a banner year for books? Not exactly. It was partly a walk on the dark side. In 2022, I started reading John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee books. I read the rest of them–there are 21 altogether–in 2023. As I wrote last year, McGee is a guilty pleasure. Who wouldn’t like to live on a Florida houseboat and fend off beautiful women, while doing battle with evildoers? MacDonald was prolific, and wrote lots of stand-alone books in addition to the McGee series. In 2023, I read a number of them–A Key to the Suite, The Last One Left, Where is Janice Gantry?, A Bullet For Cinderella, Cry Hard, Cry Fast, Cape Fear. My favorite of this group was Cry Hard, Cry Fast, about a multi-vehicle car accident.
We are verging on the noir here, so we may as well dive in. I read J.M. Cain’s principal books, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, and Mildred Pierce. They are all good; I liked Postman a little better than Double Indemnity. Mildred Pierce is not a crime novel. Hollywood improved it by turning it into one.
Then we have Mickey Spillane. Seriously. He was very popular when I was a kid, and I remembered I, the Jury from those days. Spillane is a couple of notches down from people like MacDonald and Cain, but still fun to read. I, the Jury is the first novel featuring private detective Mike Hammer, who drinks an astonishing amount and encounters as many women as Travis McGee. It’s not bad, but if you don’t figure out who the murderer is, you haven’t been paying attention.
Early in 2023, I came across the Modern Library’s list of the 100 best novels, compiled quite a few years ago, and thought it could be an opportunity to read some well-known books that I have missed over the years. The list generated some diverse titles. Winesburg, Ohio is a very good short story collection set in the early 20th century. Zuleika Dobson, by Max Beerbohm, is extremely eccentric; it is, technically speaking, about a mass suicide. It is probably as much about Oxford University as anything. John O’Hara’s Butterfield 8 is good, his Appointment In Samarra is, I think, better. Both are jaundiced views of mid-century America.
The weirdest book from that list was Under the Volcano, by Malcolm Lowry. The action takes place over a day or two in and around a small town in Mexico. The protagonist (“the Consul”) is drunk for the entire course of the book. His ex-wife unexpectedly shows up. It turns out that she has also slept with the other two characters who feature prominently, one of whom is the Consul’s brother, but she is the most normal person in the book. It is strange but addictive.
The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford was also on the Modern Library list. It is pretty good.
Herman Wouk came up on Power Line last year. He was a middlebrow author whose works were ubiquitous during my youth, but I hadn’t read them. So last year I read The Winds of War, about naval officer Pug Henry and his family in the years leading up to Pearl Harbor. It is a really excellent book. The sequel, War and Remembrance, covers the World War II years. It focuses in considerable part on the Holocaust. In my opinion, it isn’t quite as successful as The Winds of War as a novel. It is earnest: at the end, Wouk breaks the fourth wall and the novel ends with a plea for world peace. But both books, though very long, are well worth your time. The Henrys are an engaging bunch, and Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin all figure to one degree or another as characters.
Having enjoyed those books, I picked up Wouk’s Marjorie Morningstar, a title I dimly remembered from decades ago. Marjorie Morningstar–actually, Morgenstern–is a Jewish girl growing up it the New York of the 1930s. The book is long; Wouk apparently didn’t write any short novels. But I liked it immensely. Marjorie is a compelling character (Wouk is great at delineating personality) and the milieu is, I think, fascinating.
Willa Cather is arguably America’s finest novelist. Last year I read Death Comes For the Archbishop and A Lost Lady, both of which I recommend.
In 2022 I read quite a bit of Hemingway and Fitzgerald. In 2023 I read Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, set during the Spanish Civil War. It is very good, in my opinion, in part because it doesn’t mindlessly take a pro-Republican/Communist view. Hemingway’s protagonist is an idealist, but the author is hard-eyed about both sides to the conflict. For Whom the Bell Tolls plays to Hemingway’s strength, his acute eye for the physical realities of the world.
One good thing about getting older is that you can re-read books. Francis Parkman’s seven-volume series, collectively France and England In North America, is a classic of American history and one of the best works I have ever read. It has been a long time, several decades, so I decided to re-read Parkman. In 2022 I read the first two volumes in the series, Pioneers of France in the New World and The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century. They were as great as I remembered. The latter volume is searing; if you have any illusions about the Indians, it will disabuse you of them.
As in other recent years, my history consumption was mostly in the car, via the Great Courses. But I did read Under Jerusalem, about the history of archaeology in Israel. It is entertaining, but never really does tell you what is under Jerusalem. Also a riveting book called Batavia’s Graveyard, about a 17th century Dutch shipwreck. It is a true story that won’t make you feel more optimistic about human nature. Recommended nevertheless.
I also read Mary Beard’s Twelve Caesars, which my wife got me for Christmas a year ago. I think she assumed it was a history book, and knew that I have enjoyed others by Beard, like SPQR. But Twelve Caesars is actually about art–visual images of the iconic twelve caesars through the centuries. A little esoteric, but enjoyable.
Flaubert has long been one of my favorite novelists. If only he had written more books! It had been many years since I read Madame Bovary, so I read it again. It is outstanding, one of the best.
Anthony Trollope was astonishingly prolific. If you had nothing else to read, Trollope could last a lifetime. I downloaded his complete works for $1.99 or something. I randomly picked The Belton Estate to read. It is not great Trollope, but it is pretty good Trollope. If you haven’t dipped into his novels, the Palliser and Barsetshire series are the places to start, along with The Way We Live Now. Ignore those who say The Way We Live Now is some kind of indictment of free enterprise. It isn’t.
I’ve heard of Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh for many years, and thought I might as well read it. It is a strange book, written from an ethical perspective of which I don’t really approve. I don’t particularly recommend it.
There are a few series that I follow. Thus, I read Michael Connelly’s Resurrection Walk, the latest of his Lincoln Lawyer books, in which, at the end, Mickey Haller apparently vows to give up practicing law. Maybe in the next volume he will put his Lincoln to use as an Uber driver.
Also Brad Thor’s Dead Fall. Scot Harvath is getting a little long in the tooth, but is still indestructible. And C. J. Box’s Storm Watch, 23rd in the Joe Pickett series that is still going strong, and Treasure State, the latest in his Cassie Dewell series, which I like just as much.
I don’t read a lot of contemporary fiction, but I did pick up one called The Ghost Theatre, set in Elizabethan England. It wasn’t bad, if you set aside the apparently mandatory bit of gender confusion.
One I almost forgot, part of my exploration of American fiction that I have heard of but hadn’t gotten around to reading: John Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat. I thought I would like it, as I remember Cannery Row fondly from high school, but it was pretty bad. I didn’t finish it.
What else? Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt, about a lesbian romance. It is good.
No doubt I am forgetting a few, but that is enough. It was an eclectic year. 2023 may be a little more upscale, as I have gotten MacDonald and Cain out of my system. On the other hand, Mickey Spillane wrote more than 40 novels. So maybe I will get to a few more this year.