More thought-provoking essays by this most interesting essayist from the New Yorker. Part One is described as Obsessives, Pioneers, and Other Varieties of Minor Genius and Part Two as Theories, Predictions and Diagnoses. He is so interesting. Once his interest has been piqued he will not let go but follows the story. In his fascination with what he describes lies the secret of why he is such fun to read. He is the almost perfect holiday or travel book, topics can be taken up, browsed and discussed. This one was published in 2009.

I found this book at O’Hare, (not O’Hara) and had not realised either that this novel was by O’Hara or that it was a best seller in 1935. Of course for me it will always be linked with the movie starring Elizabeth Taylor and the climactic events that followed my being discovered watching an X film at a Wolverhampton Cinema…. But this book is much better than I had expected. Almost a Capote like heroine, perhaps he got his idea for Holly Golightly from this book. Here Gloria is a well raised middle class good time girl adrift in the amoral world of New York Speakeasies in 1930. It’s a kind of sad tale too, as she is pursued by her married lover and accidentally falls off the top of a steam boat to her mangled death. The wages of sin and all that. It is noticeable that by the time of Capote it is no longer necessary for a naughty girl to die, but she certainly has to disappear. The tone of the book reminded me of the books by that other fine New York novelist whom Gore Vidal so much enjoyed: Dawn Powell.

A book of raunch. I honestly don’t know what to make of this. I think the best way to think of it is comic pornography. The sound of one hand reading.

A Psychological Portrait A psychobiography. And perhaps the only sensible way to approach the infant Bush. This way one can read about him without being consumed by hatred. How he became President is such a puzzle, let alone how he could appeal so much to so many, despite fulfilling Gore Vidal’s accurate prediction that he would become the worst President in history. Mind you that’s quite a tough category, there are so many entries in the race. I had hoped the Bush recession would remind America not to put an incompetent in charge of the business again, but well, the Tea Party beggar description. Even Evelyn Waugh could not have invented them. They seem invented by Dickens at his most anti-American. (He did get over that by the way, though Martin Chuzzlewit and American Notes will give you some idea of the fear and loathing stage he went through.) So back to the Bush wars. If you did a portrait of Bush warts and all you’d only have the warts, so at least this psychologically sympathetic book attempts to understand rather than condemn. (A unique idea I know.) The early death of his sister when he was seven (with no parental warning) seems to have been the key element, rather than the Oedipal struggle with his father, whom he loves and idolizes. W comes out as both more pleasant and less naïve than in other portraits, but still, even if we can forget his wars, what he did to the world economy is going to take some surviving.

Is there any sadder sight than the mob waiting outside Oscar Wilde’s house the morning after he was sentenced, to bargain for, to buy at auction, and in some instances purloin his priceless precious library. Wilde could apparently consume a whole book in half an hour and answer detailed questions on it. That he was well read is a given, but that he was also an intellectual genius is something I had somehow failed to pick up on. Educated in Ireland at the finest schools and encouraged by his poet mother, he had the finest classical education, took an effortless first at Oxford, and was probably the finest read English writer since Coleridge. This is a nice idea of a biography, the subject seen through his reading. Of course you couldn’t do George Bush that way…

Dipped into this pond. A memoir of his two years on Rhodes.

Picked up a 1922 Modern Edition Library in very bad shape and was immediately seduced by the prose. Yes it is a touch too Oedipal but his descriptions of young love, and the anguish it brings to the young is incomparable, I liked him all over again. Paul Morel. Reminded me of discovering him and this book at 16.

Fabulous 1968 First Edition Amis, at his finest. Here a TV host pursues the weird daughter of the wealthy, winning her on his own merits. In many ways more readable even than Lucky Jim.

Collected by Martin Amis. And incomparable.

Now this is how you write a mystery. Not a word too many, never a dull moment. Not stooping to conquer. Not a pretence that you might instead be writing a Booker Prize Winner, this is simply fabulous. I read the first half all the way to Chicago and the second all the way back. Couldn’t put it down. Utterly engrossing. It’s a Jane Whitefield novel. She is the Seneca Native American who helps people escape into new lives. This one even ratchets the temperature up higher, but I won’t spoil it for you. If this is your first, do yourself a favour and read your way up to here. All of his books are wonderful. This is an advance copy and is not published until next March. I cannot wait for the next.

John Banville writing as Benjamin Black. A new Quirke Dublin Mystery. But not a very good one. I think Black’s work is affecting Banville’s. Certainly not as good as the previous Quirke’s. This time Dublin is having a heat wave…. But the usual murky suspects to a suicide of a wealthy businessman or is it murder? The victim’s odd French wife has an affair with Quirke. Never really believable.