One middle-aged man in search of The Point. A friend sent me this, and then brought him to dinner. Very funny pieces by the low life correspondent of the Spectator. In his own words: “He remains an undiscovered talent.” Modest, witty, and hilarious.

A friend sent this advanced copy for a comment, the biography of a boy growing up in Leeds Castle, but I’m afraid I found it uninteresting.

A nice 1940 edition, picked up in a second-hand bookshop in Chichester. A finely written story of the life of the Beau, who seems not only madly self-centred and utterly entitled, but vain, and not a little gay. He seems to be a bitchy queen half his life, and while he has many female admirers, with whom he gossips and corresponds, he doesn’t seem to sleep with them. Hello? Yes he is funny and foolishly brave insulting the Prince Regent when he is cut by him on Piccadilly, (“Alveney, who is your fat friend?”) but his entire life is dressing up, and three hours toilette and he changed his lingerie three times a day, so if that isn’t the height of narcissism what is? His gambling addiction and his penchant for borrowing money from his aristocratic friends makes it virtually inevitable he has to run away to Calais, where he lives in great style, but constantly on the edge of poverty by continually writing to and borrowing from old acquaintances. His sense of entitlement never leaves him, as he becomes Consul in Caen for a moment before talking himself out of a job. Perhaps this is the gamblers vice, to lose everything. He declines into squalor, sued by a former friend and thrown into prison, freed by friends, only to end up in a madhouse as reality overtakes his vanity. I thought it might make a nice play and then the Beau would of course have to be played by Simon Russell Beale. Excellent biography.

A lovely book in a lovely pocket paperback edition by Pushkin Press. Here, the sadly elderly Casanova is lingering around Mantua, waiting for permission to return to Venice, where he will accept the ignominious job of government spy. His powers waning, but not his interest in seduction, he has to face the decline of his fame, a challenge from a younger self, and encounters with both young and old females who want him virtually as a trophy, because of his reputation. At a friend’s house he behaves despicably to gain his way with a young woman who does not want him, bribing his rival, only to have to face a naked duel and his own feelings about his decline. So, then a book about mortality and morality, written by the excellent Austrian author Arthur Schnitzler, whom I have always enjoyed.

My other recently discovered author is Edward St. Aubyn and I binged with great delight on The Patrick Melrose Novels. This, the final one, I had started previously, but didn’t get as it is set at the funeral of the mother of the protagonist and you really have to read them in order to understand who is what, and what they did to who. In particular here he examines Eleanor the mother, and her complicity in the awful relationship with his father which permitted this poor child to be so sadistically and brutally bullied and sexually abused. A delightfully written and sympathetic conclusion to a life examined.

The First Three Bernie Gunther novels. This has been my year for discovering the Edinburgh born Philip Kerr, and this summer I have binged on his books. Fortunately there are tons of them. His Bernie Gunther detective novels are about as good as it gets, plus they are set fascinatingly in Berlin during the Nazi period, so that we get a sense of how such an evil invades and takes over by small steps, while many were against it, but it is difficult to face the encroaching daily choices, and the risk of being murdered for speaking out. The joy of Bernie, is that he invariably speaks out, often in the face of the real Himmler, or Heydrich. Meanwhile he writes great detective fiction, shags the most delicious women, drinks and smokes and through him we see the rise and fall of Nazism and the appalling end Berlin undergoes. Invasion by the Russians? No, crucifixion please.

I was discussing with a friend how some novels which we read avidly in our teens and early twenties no longer stand up to re-reading, or we no longer regard them with such affection. Is it them, or is it us? Examples: Lawrence Durrell and The Alexandrian Quartet, Ulysses, and now I have been re-reading Catch 22 and it didn’t do it for me. Nothing wrong, I simply had had the gags and didn’t want to revisit the territory. Whereas Dickens gets better by the re-read, apart say from The Old Curiosity Shop and the nauseating Little Nell and the wildly unfunny Pickwick Papers. The exception for me with Lawrence Durrell is his excellent book Provence.

Well not for the first time I change my mind. I loved this book on second reading. He is so completely funny. The opening few chapters are hysterical. The Northern novelist self-mockery, the observation of the state of published fiction, of the dearth of readers, all superbly realised. I had the feeling I would enjoy it more the second time and should give it another go and I did. Perhaps too, in paperback it seems less portentous, more mocking of the serious novel, than being that. It is that, serious, too, and ends with fine irony, his wife whose literary pretensions he has scoffed at throughout, turns out to be the successful one, but even then he succeeds, succeeds in writing “popular” fiction under a pseudonym, while the mother in law whom he fancies goes off with his publisher. I did it a disservice. I was wrong. As we say up North “Is it me, or can you smell gas?”

At some point in the summer I re-read this, which brings back three of his favourite characters—Jack Foley from Out of Sight, Cundo Rey from La Brava, and Dawn Navarro from Riding the Rap—for “ a twisting, explosive, always surprising masterwork of crime fiction.” Foley was the Clooney one.

Read in a day. Impossible to put down. The first I have read since he died, but of course he isn’t any more dead to me than he ever was. He’s alive the minute you pick up his amazing pages. And I will go on reading him until I pop off. I would guess it’s about 80% dialogue, but he seems able to establish real believable characters whom you think you know, and are certain to visualize, almost instantaneously. How does he do that? Of course the basis of his books seem to be Westerns, there are good men and there are bad men, and here he actually ends with a shoot-out. It’s also subtitled High Noon in Detroit. In the matter of Alvin B. Guy, Judge of Recorder’s Court, City of Detroit: The investigation of the Judicial Tenure Commission found the respondent guilty of misconduct in office and conduct clearly prejudicial to the administration of justice. The allegations set forth in the formal complaint were that Judge Guy: Was discourteous and abusive to counsel, litigants, witnesses, court personnel, spectators and news reporters. 2) Used threats of imprisonment or promises of probation to induce pleas of guilty. 3) Abused the power of contempt. 4) Used his office to benefit friends and acquaintances. 5) Bragged of his sexual prowess openly. 6) Was continually guilty of judicial misconduct that was not only prejudicial to the administration of justice but destroyed respect for the office he holds. Ride down Woodward Avenue into the Motor City, toward a deadly show-down between dedicated homicide detective Raymond Cruz and a psychopathic murderer, “Oklahoma Wildman” Clement Mansell, who picked the wrong town to kill someone, even if it was only a crooked judge. Murder in Motown! Mansell picked the wrong place to go on a rampage. Homicide Detective Raymond Cruz doesn’t care who it is; nobody kills in his town.

Scholarly but slightly dull. So much is unnecessary. I abandoned at half time, which is the wrong time to abandon Marlowe. I shall perhaps take it up again later and skim, because the subject is interesting if the author is not.