Tag Archives: Book Reviews

October 12, 2025 · 1:35 pm

Maria La Divina by Jerome Charyn book review

Maria La Divina. Jerome Charyn. Bellevue Literary Press. 2025. 

Maria Callas (1923-1977), the celebrated opera singer, has gotten on more people’s radars with Angelina Jolie’s portrayal in Maria, on Netflix. Add to your appreciation of Maria Callas with the new novel by Jerome Charyn. Callas had the look, the poise, and, most assuredly, the voice. While keeping to her opera sphere of influence, she was certainly heard beyond it. Novelist Jerome Charyn, known for his in-depth explorations of notable figures, including Emily Dickinson and Abraham Lincoln, delivers a rags-to-riches tale of Callas at the level befitting such a towering diva.

Maria Callas is this novel’s clay, which Charyn molds into this beautiful melancholic character: perpetually hungry for cheese and chocolate; perpetually starving for love; blessed with extraordinary raw talent; burdened with poor eyesight and awkwardness. Callas came from humble origins. So humble that a Dickensian treatment, at least in part, is apropos to tell her story. Once she found her voice, she began to soar, even while still a teenager, at the height of World War II, living in occupied Greece, and fearing for her life. But Callas, at her core, isn’t especially fearful in this novel. She is gifted with an out-sized operatic singing voice that preoccupies her every waking moment. Displaced as she is growing up, her neurotic stage mother moving her and her sister from New York to Greece, she gains much solace from the companionship of three canaries, particularly her prized Stephanakos. Her lovers fated to doom. Callas, truly a tragic figure.

Maria Callas, portrait by Cecil Beaton, 1956.

Charyn, a masterful writer by any measure, is a delight to read. He sets in motion a narrative that you do not want to put down. His prose has a distinctive poetic magic to it, a relentless drive that charms and intrigues the reader. He will highlight certain aspects, features, quirks, of a character and return to them: Maria’s devouring, like a wolf, cheese and chocolate; Maria’s aspirations to master the art of “bel canto,” an impossible goal for any singer; Maria’s myopia, leaving her to memorize every inch of the stage since she won’t easily see it when she performs. Charyn, the writer and artist, diligently researches his subject to the point where he has a palette to dive into, like a painter, that sets him free to express the essence, meaning and purpose of a character, a story.

Maria Callas was to know world-wide fame but happiness was to allude her. In many ways, she was trapped: another VIP among other VIPs. It is in this bittersweet world of privilege and deprivation that Maria navigated. In such a world, she could be both miserable and mesmerized. In such a world she could find herself on the yacht of one of the richest men in the world, Aristole Onasis, circa 1959, the start of an extended love affair with Onasis. Here is just a brief excerpt as Charyn, amid all the glamour and pomp, has Callas, in an unhappy marriage with her manager, return to the simple pleasures of her canaries while speaking with Winston Chruchill:

“Madame Meneghini,” Sir Winston said, “you keep staring at poor Toby. Does my bird delight you?”

A shiver ran through Maria. Somehow this pompous bird reminded her of Stephanakos, her lost canary, and how much she missed singing duets with that bright yellow wonder of a male soprano.

“Forgive me, Sir Winston. I did not mean to stare. But I must kiss your hand.” And she did. His hand felt rough against her lips.

“That’s cheeky,” said Sir Winston’s bodyguard from Scotland Yard.

“Shut up,” Sir Winston said, his eyes half closed, “and let the opera singer explain herself. I’m sure she had an excellent reason, Sergeant Marley.”

“You see,” Maria said, “I was in Athens during the civil war, when you arrived in your armored car. It ignited the population.”

The old man with the babyish bald head was suddenly alert. “I remember that afternoon, indeed. I couldn’t afford to have Greece fall to the Reds. All of Europe would have fallen.”

Sir Winston’s head began to droop. His bodyguards transferred him to the outsize wheelchair, trundled him as far as they could, then cradled him in their arms and carried him to Aristotle’s lavish suite on the bridge deck.

Maria La Divina by Jerome Charyn is available now. I highly recommend that you seek out this engaging tale of bittersweet existence, the story of Maria Callas, La Divina, considered the greatest diva that ever lived.

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October 30, 2024 · 1:00 pm

DEAD AIR: The Night That Orson Welles Terrified America book review

Dead Air: The Night That Orson Welles Terrified America. William Elliott Hazelgrove. Rowman & Littlefield. 2024. 280pp. $32.

For six seconds, Orson Welles held his audience in suspense with utter silence during the infamous 1938 Halloween broadcast of The War of the Worlds. This is the linchpin moment vital to this book’s argument that Orson Welles had a malevolent intention behind this most talked about radio scare. Was it a playful prank, an attempt at art, that got out of control? Most will argue that to be the case. William Elliott Hazelgrove, the author of this book, prefers to paint a much darker picture. Whatever the case, you can add this to the mountain of books on Welles and make a note of its intriguing details.

Orson Welles rehearsing War of the Worlds broadcast, 1938.

Orson Welles, given such a vast and complex career, continues to inspire great love and hate. Hazelgrove comes out of the gate exhibiting his scorn like a badge of honor with a bombastic description of what it must have been like for Orson Welles, someone wielding so much power as a star of the dazzling new medium of radio. No doubt, numerous casual listeners to a radio play of H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, adapted to sound like a realistic news broadcast, were innocently caught unawares in 1938 and this resulted in a panic. Hazelgrove turns the screws with his suggestion that Welles should have known better and that a touch of evil must have been at play that night. Now, whether there is more or less truth to this analysis, Hazelgrove sounds very certain. However, keep in mind, that is just Hazelgrove’s suggestion. Smithsonian Magazine presents a case of Welles and his Mercury Players team scrambling to turn their adaptation into something palatable: “The elements of the show that a fraction of its audience found so convincing crept in almost accidentally, as the Mercury desperately tried to avoid being laughed off the air.”

Orson on Mars, sketch by Orson Welles, 1938.

Given that Hazelgrove clearly falls within the anti-Welles contingent, it becomes all the more interesting to continue to read onward as he paints as unfavorable a picture of Welles as he can muster. His next target is the Welles masterpiece, Citizen Kane, which Hazelgrove quickly dismisses as a “famous flop.” In Hazelgrove’s opinion, and this is only his opinion being quoted here: “Undoubtedly, people in 1941 left the theater scratching their heads. Some caught it. Most didn’t.” The popular belief is that Citizen Kane was misunderstood in its own time but that is, in fact, not the case. There are so many facts to work with that can be spun in so many directions. William Randolph Hearst got in the way of Citizen Kane succeeding at the box office but, without a doubt, Citizen Kane, in its own time, was a critical success. So, herein lies the frustration, and fun, in discussing Welles and his work. There is more than enough room to spin the facts and tilt your argument in one direction or another. All in all, Hazelgrove offers up an engaging and highly readable addition to Welles scholarship. I don’t have to completely believe him or agree with him and you don’t have to either but, like Orson Welles himself, Hazelgrove offers something lively and highly relevant for further discussion.

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July 20, 2024 · 7:36 am

HURRICANE NANCY book review

Hurricane Nancy. Nancy Burton. Fantagraphics. 2024. 112pp. $30.

If you are looking for something that is truly authentic and distinctive, then turn your attention to the underground comix superstar Hurricane Nancy. She is the real deal and her new book showcasing her career in comics art has been recently published by Fantagraphics.

I have gotten to know the art of Hurricane Nancy bit by bit, as it has appeared here on Comics Grinder. From time to time, I have added color to her iconic black & white artwork. Ultimately, the work must be respected in its original form. I think my impulse to add color comes from the fact the art emits so much energy, a colorful force all its own. This is wild and wooly and defiant work. At its heart, this is work coming straight out of the Sixties counterculture at its very nexus on the Lower East Side of New York City. These are highly uninhibited flowing lines, oozing and spilling across the page about protest, outrage, sex and simply being alive.

True to form, Hurricane Nancy does whatever she likes, going back to the first comic strip, Gentles Tripout, in 1966, in The East Village Other. This first foray into “art comics” lets loose a young artist’s instincts, part rebellious, part Alice in Wonderland trippy. These early comic strips lead to full page explorations with Busy Boxes. Things rapidly progress into full-on drawings, moving well beyond sequential art considerations while still embracing comics as part of the tool chest.

Once we reach the more recent section of art in this book, “Artwork 2010 – Present,” I’m on more familiar ground. More mature and evenly paced? Perhaps what this book helps me appreciate is that a lot of what Hurricane Nancy is about was always there from the start.

One thing I always come back to is the idea that we can never have enough comics art in galleries and museums. I think this first time collection of the work of artist-cartoonist Hurricane Nancy is a brilliant step forward for artists, women artists, comics artists, you name it. You can consider it the art catalog ahead of the museum art show. Seriously, this book presents the work in a very appealing way, on a black backdrop, complete with a highly insightful interview between writer Alex Dueben and the artist.

This is how it’s done. If you are an artist in search of a bigger audience, you create the party and you bring the people to it. This book is such a party and you are invited.

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July 19, 2024 · 11:00 am

Over For Rockwell by Uzodinma Okehi book review

Over For Rockwell. Uzodinma Okehi. Hobart. 2015. 344 pp. $12.

It’s always been for me a search for the authentic, the different and the real. That is what leads me to this gem, a real dreamer’s notebook: Over For Rockwell, by Uzodinma Okehi. This deliberately pint-sized book, a collection of prose short stories, packs plenty of punch with Blue Okoye leading the way, a protagonist feverishly seeking the euphoric stuff of life.

Art by Uzodinma Okehi.

Perhaps Blue Okoye is an alter ego for the author. Very good chance of that–or at least a jumping off point in the tradition of, well, just about every audacious and ambitious young writer out to suck the very marrow of existence. Our story has much to do with a young man pitted against, and madly in love with, the big city. Which big city? Well, New York City, of course, is front and center but also the BIG CITY in general and that leads to adventures overseas, particularly Hong Kong. Our hero is up to his eyeballs in frenzied lust for life: out to create great art and bed every beautiful woman he can charm. Yes, all the hot and classic stuff, before some people lost their nerve to go all-out Hemingway. This is a collection of loosely connected observations, some twenty years ago, and then going even further back, but it all rings true and has a timeless quality to it. In fact, the narrative is structured in such a way that has Blue Okoye on his excellent adventures spiraling through time. We begin circa 1995, jump around to 2003 and beyond, and land back in 1995. All to show that the shaggy dog stories from our salad days share much in common, transcend the boundaries of time.

The novel is very clever and fun to read, even if it doesn’t have much in the way of a plot, at least not in the traditional sense. Okehi defies convention at every turn, delivering a series of observations that resemble a story but doesn’t adhere to any rules. This main character appears to be perpetually on the make, dreaming big dreams, and colliding with the reality that he will likely never be a so-called “success.” At times, a lot actually, Okehi questions the goals we’ve been told we must achieve: the soul-crushing game of gaining notoriety. Was it ever in the cards for our hero, Blue Okoye? Success is a very hard thing to pin down, especially if you keep feeling the need to roam the streets at night in search of some elusive epiphany, notebook in hand, ready to jot down inspiration as it beams down upon you. So, yeah, Okehi has fun with the starving artist tropes for all they’re worth. No matter how hard you try to pry it from him, your dim-witted co-worker at the warehouse is probably not going to blurt out some piece of inadvertent wisdom that you, as the artist, can mine for gold.

One of the really interesting things going on in this very quirky novel is the send-up of the indie comics community. Blue Okoye is supposed to be an aspiring comics artist although there is very little to indicate why he is pursuing this line of creative work and what he hopes to achieve. And perhaps that is the whole point. Blue Okoye is simply performing a role. He plucked out a purpose in life from all the cool and hip options before him and he’s sticking to it. Okehi doesn’t only depict Okoye as shallow but all the other comics artists he knows seem to be treading water as well. Ah, the folly of youth. Will Blue Okoye mature in time and find some real meaning to life? Well, that’s for another novel. This novel is all about floundering and, on that subject, it succeeds with flying colors.

Also available from the same author is House of Hunger, a continuation of the Blue Okoye adventures. I think, if you’re new to this, it will be a lot of fun to dive into either work and let it take over. After taking a look at both, I appreciate the indie connection more as Okehi is basically treating all these prose short stories as content to publish in the small press community and/or as short works in a zine format to be sold at small venues, especially various zine and indie comics festivals, to perhaps be later collected into a book. And, of course, the overriding theme of these stories invariably is about this indie/small press community. Works for me.

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November 1, 2023 · 8:09 am

Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History book review

C.L.R. James’s Touissaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History. Adapted by Nic Watts and Sakina Karimjee. New York: Verso Books, 2023. 272pp, $24.95.

Guest review by Paul Buhle

This is quite a comic! A very intense treatment of the uprising in Haiti that paralleled and deeply involved the French Revolution and yet was treated for centuries as a mere sidebar to world events. Readers will need to think hard, even now, about the reasons why.

But your reviewer gets ahead of the story. This is the graphic adaptation of a play performed on the British stage with Paul Robeson, the phenomenal actor (also and otherwise mainly singer), during the mid-1930s. The author of the play, C.L.R. James, had emigrated from his native Trinidad to Britain in 1931, earned a living as a top-notch cricket reporter, but found himself immersed simultaneously in anti-colonial movements and in the Trotskyist corner of the political Left.

According to contemporary stage critics, the play came across too talky for the drama that it represented, perhaps inevitably: it could have required a cast of thousands. Then again, the subject had hardly surfaced by that time.  James’s The Black Jacobins (1938), a parallel to W.E.B.  Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction (1935), arose out of his research on the French Revoluition, then grew and grew. It was a story that had hardly been told at all. And if the book received respectable reviews, it fairly disappeared until reappearing as a textbook on campus campuses in the early 1960s. This was “Black History” written like a novel, one of the great successes of the time, definitely parallel to the reprinted editions of Black Reconstruction, one of the later editions introduced by none other than C.L.R. James.

Nic Watts and Sakina  Karimjee fill the pages with dramatic dialogues (as well as monologues) that draw directly upon the play, and on many pages do not require a dense background. Here and there, we see a remarkable landscape or a vivid crowd scene, but speaking largely moves the story along. Neither the colonizers nor the colonized can be described as unified in their ideas and their actions. On the contrary, events play out with internal agreements astonishingly almost as volatile as between whites, blacks and mulattoes.

James, who also happened to be one of the very first non-white novelists of the English-speaking West Indies, never again had the time, energy or will to write a drama, nor did Robeson (who later captured the stage with his Othello) have the opportunity to play the great black revolutionary hero again. It was a one-time collaboration of giants, after all, but the artists have, in their way, captured both the sense of the play and its deepest meaning. Here, all the contempt of whites for their suppose “inferiors,” against the background of a French Revolution that supposedly broke down all the barriers of inequality. There, the rage of slaves who, contrary to stereotype, did not “go wild” but found their own way, choosing Toussaint as he chose them and following him to the death with a tolerance for suffering that seemed to whites unbelieveable.

Independent Haiti will, of course, be betrayed, by the U.S. among other world powers, isolated and punished for having the nerve to demonstrate the right and capacity for freedom from slavery. The persecution has not ended even now.

But at least the story has been told.

Enough said! Get the book!

Paul Buhle is the authorized biographer of C.L.R. James and editor of more than twenty non-fiction, historical comics.

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September 28, 2022 · 2:00 pm

BIG RED by Jerome Charyn book review — Rita and Orsie and Old Hollywood

BIG RED. Book cover art by Edward Sorel.

Big Red. Jerome Charyn. ‎ Liveright. New York. 2022. 304pp. Hardcover. $28

Orson Welles was a magician in the truest sense of the word. He loved to dazzle an audience. And he was utterly fascinated with the process in which to dazzle. Many an entertainer and creative loves magic. To excel in this conjuring art form requires skill, passion, and no small amount of ego. And so it makes sense that such an inquistive novelist as Jerome Charyn, one who loves magic and is intrigued by magicians, not to mention movies, should pick Orson upon which to build a novel. Add to that the fact that Welles was married to one of the most beautiful and enigmatic of movie stars, Rita Hayworth, and you have the perfect framework for a tale about Old Hollywood.

The Boy Wonder

Orson Welles portrait by Irving Penn, for Vogue 1945

Throughout the novel, Orson Welles is called, “The Boy Wonder,” as much in honor of his genius as a dig at his excess. Welles was, in many respects, one of a kind, an outsized force of nature, untamed and undisciplined, and therefore an imperfect maestro. He was a masterful filmmaker, creating unique imagery, capturing compelling performances from his fellow actors, but prone to missteps in his lavish storytelling. He was also sloppy in his personal relationships, as Rita Hayworth, aka “Big Red,” could attest. However, as Charyn comes back to again and again, there was no director quite like him. This is a novel about art colliding with life and vice versa. Orson Welles seemed to be able to better tolerate the burden of celebrity than his spouse, Rita Hayworth. But even The Boy Wonder had his limits. Charyn plays with these dynamics, these contradictions, repeatedly bringing home the fact that a big, flat footed and insecure man, no matter how talented, was perpetually bending to the pressures of being a Boy Wonder. And if the pressure should prove too much for someone as flamboyant as Welles, then how must it have been for someone so shy and demure as Rita Hayworth?

The true nature of one Rita Hayworth, with her own nickname, both a tribute and a put down, gets to the crux of the matter. Charyn brings out the fact that the real person behind the name wears the name of Big Red like an albatross around her neck. In a moment of passion, the nickname can praise just as quickly as it can cut. Who can live up to all the larger-than-life expectations? Not Rita, or Margarita, the girl who lost her childhood to a father who exploited and abused her, making her his dancing partner by age twelve, the two of them working as a duo in casinos, treating her as if she were his lover. The abuse had left her with little of a voice, a life of depression and despair, even though she had honed the skills, from an early age, of a great entertainer. Charyn provides the reader with a portrait of a formidable beauty with the soul of a frightened child.

Rita Hayworth in 1946’s Gilda.

Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth were married from 1943 to 1947. Much of the novel focuses on the dynamics of this mismatched couple. It was in star power that Hayworth held her own, and even eclipsed Welles for a time. But her shyness seemed to cancel out her extraordinary beauty. Charyn places a unique character, Rusty Redburn, right in the middle of the action, someone who manages to navigate her way between the two and provide special insight on them. Rusty is a young aspiring writer who stumbles into work on the Columbia lot and, by a set of circumstances, ends up working as a private secretary to Rita Hayworth while also serving as spy for studio boss Harry Cohn. Rusty learns it’s important to keep a close eye on Big Red, as well as Welles, but she does as she wants and maintains her loyalty to Rita and Orsie. Over the course of the novel, with Rusty’s vantage point, a rollicking story unfolds tracing the trajectory of two of the strangest and most magnificent of Hollywood icons.

Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles

Mise-en-Scène or Depth of Field technique in CITIZEN KANE

As true to form as ever, Jerome Charyn tackles the man behind the celebrated cinematic masterpiece, Citizen Kane, and his power to fascinate an audience as well as hurt those he was supposed to love. Charyn, a great fan and scholar of cinema, with a journalist’s instinct for a great story, has made the most of his subject for his latest novel, filled with his signature use of imagery and metaphor. Charyn, the magician with words, delivers various breathtaking moments once all the chess pieces to his tale are in play. One of the greatest is when Orson Welles, at loose ends and in need of an adrenaline rush, mounts a full-scale circus in the middle of Hollywood. It is one of the most surreal and entertaining tributes to Hollywood and unfettered creativity you will ever read. It may seem a pity that Welles, the man, was unable to live up to the myth. It was a legend he himself helped to perpetuate and which choked him at every turn. Of course, no one, not even a magician, would ever have survived unscathed from all the bright lights, noise, and hype. Charyn brings home the point that it is this grand illusion that will forever fascinate and captivate, prone to ensnare an audience and actor alike.

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June 8, 2022 · 7:50 am

DIRTY PICTURES by Brian Doherty–a Look at the Origins of Comix

Dirty Pictures: How an Underground Network of Nerds, Feminists, Misfits, Geniuses, Bikers, Potheads, Printers, Intellectuals, and Art School Rebels Revolutionized Art and Invented Comix. by Brian Doherty. Abrams Press. 2022. 448 pp. $30.

Comix! No, not just comics. Comix is the term we use to describe all the work created by independent comics creators (often auteur cartoonists doing both the writing and the drawing) dating back to the Sixties underground up to today. Brian Doherty has had a great time digging into the roots of, and connecting the dots to, this quirky offshoot of the comics medium. First off, I gotta say that Doherty is quite in tune with his subject and cuts to the chase. Perhaps the biggest question that comes up on this topic is What in the hell was R. Crumb thinking? Well, you won’t get far without an open mind on this. Doherty gets to the heart of the matter with a quote from 1972. A reporter for The New York Times asked what Crumb’s intention was in creating some of his most macabre and provocative work. Crumb answered, “I don’t know. I think I was just being a punk.” Then Doherty adds to that the fact that Crumb and his fellow cartoonists were all bucking a highly restrictive system of censorship. Nothing was allowed at the risk of offending anyone! If that sounds familiar, well, it won’t be lost on anyone reading this book. The point is, Crumb was indeed reacting to something, rebelling against something. Did he go too far? Or was it more one guy’s approach, along with a whole slew of other cartoonists, both men and women, with their own fiery takes on society? I think this whole book rests upon the assumption that a reader can walk and chew gum at the same time. In other words, yes, there is a possibility of seriously looking at the most controversial facets of comix without retreating from it. One key aspect to understanding is to look at the motivation to rebel. As Doherty reminds us, the “x” in comix is there for a reason: to distinguish comix from mainstream comics, the all too often watered-down and lame opposition, particularly during the days of the Comics Code.

Once we get something of a handle on Crumb, the rest of comix is a piece of cake! Well, maybe not. But that’s basically the arc we’re following: the great warriors, led by Crumb, out to raise hell; then, the reaction to all this ruckus, which included anyone offended by the first wave of mayhem; ultimately, a long process of the original “filth” working its way through the rest of the culture; and finally, all the accounts settled and those left standing declared the champions: Crumb, Spiegelman, and so on. Doherty does an impressive job of maintaining the flow of events, logically moving from one place, one publisher, one movement, after another. For those old enough to remember some of this history, it rings very true. Doherty has written the kind of book that many of us knew was possible. It involves keeping an eye on the key players and examining their aspirations and actual activities. Again, it’s impossible to avoid both Crumb and Spiegelman, both very aware of the fact they had reputations to either maintain or enhance. And then, of course, you had all sorts of other activity brewing, not the least of which was the feminist contingent led by Trina Robbins and her crew at Wimmen’s Comix. Robbins and her women cartoonists were determined to fight fire with fire.

Like any great art movement, comix is the story of the artists who led the way as well as of those to have taken up the mantle. What sustains the character and spirit of comix today harkens back to the highly charged independent streak of the original underground. You can’t have comix, or anything that resembles it, without a healthy embrace of the subversive, the experimental, and the guts to see through the most outrageous expression. It may offend. In fact, it definitely will offend and there will be consequences to pay. But, all in all, we’re far better off when an artist isn’t restricted or afraid to just be a punk, as Crumb summed it up. But art cannot remain in a vacuum or it will die. As Doherty points out, a new wave of artists brought in refinements. Most notably was a finer sense of the literary as demonstrated by Los Bros Hernandez and their ambitious Love and Rockets comics willing to take on richer and subtler literary aspirations. I’ve been a champion of the term, “alternative comics,” as I see it as a very valuable distinction. It’s nice to see Doherty using it here. He points out that pivotal break with the past as the underground ruckus rebellion gave way to a more cerebral alternative vibe. Indeed, it was to be a new and significant development to the still unfolding world of indie comics, a world that has given shape to the highly personal and strange creature we know today as the “graphic novel.” Sure, there are still diehard purists who claim to not understand what is meant by that term outside of being a brazen marketing tool. But people do know what a graphic novel is, or can be, just as they know what is meant by the term, “comix.” And that’s because, believe it not, people can really walk and chew gum at the same time. If they couldn’t, well, we’d really be in a lot more trouble. Doherty’s book is a very welcome addition to our understanding of comix, from its origins up to its current offshoots, offering common sense insight.

DIRTY PICTURES is available beginning June 14, 2022 and ready for pre-order. Visit Abrams Press.

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November 7, 2021 · 10:35 am

Book Review: ‘Tenderness’ by Alison MacLeod

Tenderness. Alison MacLeod. Bloomsbury. London. 2021. 640pp. $24.49

Editor’s Note: This book is ready for pre-order purchases. Available in the US as of 11/09/21.

Tenderness is a feast of a novel. This is easily one of the best current reads. And it all has to do with what once was an obscure novel nearly killed in the cradle. Many people have at least heard of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, by D.H. Lawrence, originally published privately in 1928 and finally made available in 1960 after an infamous obscenity legal battle in the UK and the US. Oddly enough, even after surviving the courts, this most misunderstood of novels was nearly killed again in a self-imposed academic attempted murder by feminist scholars because of what they deemed as certain less than enlightened depictions of some female characters in the novel. It is a case of cancel culture from another era. Today, the novel has well cleared the hurdle of extinction. At this writing, Netflix is in production for a spectacular new film version starring Emma Corrin (The Crown) as Constance Chatterley. Now, back to the novel in question. Tenderness explores the world of Lady Chatterley primarily from the inner world of the author and the behind the scenes tug-of-war between killing and saving the book. This culture war is led by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover on the side to suppress, and future First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy on the side to save.

1960: Lady C helps usher in the Sexual Revolution! Keystone/Getty Images

The hallmark of any great historical novel is how it juggles many points of view. One of the paths this novel cuts is political. Jackie Kennedy is a classic icon: familiar while shrouded in mystery. There is nothing officially documented about Jackie Kennedy in support of Lady Chatterley but, for the sake of this historical novel, she makes for a perfect advocate. MacLeod places Jackie in attendance at a 1959 public hearing on Lady C which, in turn, results in an FBI surveillance snaphsot of her that sets in motion a whirlwind of clandestine activity by Hoover and his henchmen to bring down JFK’s presidential bid. Anyone who knows anything about Lady C, or has actually read the book, knows that this novel has as much, or more, to do with political power than with sex. Clearly, Jackie is the ultimate symbol of a political bedfellow. In 1960, Jackie was still closer to the limited world of Lady C, trapped in her own sexless marriage. The only power a woman in her position could rely upon was found through marriage. And the only control a man could rely upon over a woman, at that time, was through marriage. It is the institution of holy matrimony that is threatened by Lawrence’s controversial novel. That is actually the most “obscene” thing in the novel any detractor could say against it.

The day in 1960 when Lady Chatterley’s Lover was published after a long legal battle. Derek Berwin/Getty Images

MacLeod’s love for literature rings true in this novel which acts as a love letter to Lady C and great fiction. As any masterful writer knows, one of the most appealing aspects of embarking upon a novel is the opportunity to treat it as a vast canvas upon which you can paint your greatest passions. This passion for storytelling is brought out in the character of Dina, an ancestor to friends of the family of D.H. Lawrence, and a budding literary scholar. It’s more than a good chance that Dina stands in as an alter ego for MacLeod. It is through Dina that MacLeod can express her greatest admiration for Lawrence’s landmark work, both erudite and heartfelt. It may have been only a matter of time before just the right author came along and channeled D.H. Lawrence. Tenderness was to be the original title for Lawrence’s novel as it gets to the heart of his theme that we inevitably must give way to the demands of the body. MacLeod honors that theme with her invigorating book.

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August 27, 2021 · 2:45 pm

Book Review: ‘The Last Mona Lisa’ by Jonathan Santlofer

THE LAST MONA LISA

The Last Mona Lisa. Jonathan Santlofer. Sourcebooks. 2021. $27.99

It was back in 1987 that I made my first visit to Paris, which included viewing the Mona Lisa. My more recent visit was in 2019. I can tell you that the ’87 visit was not like the uber-spectacle it is now. It wasn’t even in the same location. As I recall, it was a huge square of a space and the Mona Lisa was housed in a booth that made me think of a carnival fortune telling machine. The gatherings of people were left to do as they pleased and behaved like instinctively polite starlings. People seemed to know just how to behave! Now, it’s like a cramped and narrow airport terminal with everyone jockeying for position, queued up for a few seconds of viewing, and then directed off by guards. Really, I’m not kidding. Anyway, I had to say that because I figure it will strike a chord with some of you and it’s a perfect opening observation to a book that I believe would satisfy a lot of the curiosity out there for the mega-famous painting. The book is entitled, The Last Mona Lisa, by a truly captivating writer, Jonathan Santlofer. I’ve been intrigued by Santlofer for some time as I’ve observed how well he’s done as both an artist and a writer. I was quite moved by his memoir and that led me to check out some of his crime fiction, which is a lot of fun. His new book takes his skills and passions  and distills them into an urbane thriller that will stay with you just like a memory of your favorite dinner overlooking a beautiful sunset. So, yeah, it’s that kind of book. In fact, if it’s not already, it should be stocked in the Louvre gift shop. And, yes, the museum is now open, albeit with health restrictions. Also, I should add here, this is a book that is ideal for any book club as you may imagine.

Mona Lisa Mania!

The Last Mona Lisa is about the greatest museum heist of them all, the theft of the Mona Lisa by a Louvre museum guard in August of 1911. It was a sensation in newspapers all over the world and catapulted the Leonardo Da Vinci painting to world-famous masterpiece status. Santlofer takes that story and weaves a narrative that explores the inner life of the thief, the frustrated artist Vincent Peruggia, and present day attempts by his great-grandson, Luke Perrone, along with a rogue INTERPOL detective among others, to unravel the mystery behind the details of this most unusual museum heist caper. All this investigating leads to the possibility that the real Mona Lisa was never returned to the Louvre and now some people will stop at nothing to get the real thing. Among the various subplots, it’s the story of Luke, the great-grandson of the original thief, that leads the way, neck and neck with following the drama of Vincent, the thief and aspiring celebrated artist.

It’s fun to follow Luke’s progress as an unlikely hero who grows into his role as a sleuth. He stumbled upon the story of his infamous great-grandfather when, as a boy, he’d been tasked with cleaning out the family attic. One look inside a chest reveals the tell-tale mugshot of Vincent Peruggia which triggers a lifelong obsession with finding out the truth about the thief of the Mona Lisa. Fast forward to the present and Luke finagles his way to gaining access to a rare books section in a prominent library in Florence, Italy. It is there that he becomes involved with a mysterious beauty, a striking blonde who just so happens to be pursuing her own scholarly search at the same table that Luke is camped out at. This, of course, sets in motion some of the key elements needed for the romantic thriller that ensues.

Santlofer paints a portrait of Vincent Peruggia as the classic malcontent would-be bad boy artist who just so happens to fall into the company of Pablo Picasso and other notable figures of the Parisian art scene, like Max Jacob. Vincent Peruggia is no Vincent van Gogh! Instead, he’s a somewhat competent artist of the most obvious subject matter like pretty still life paintings. He’s resentful of the avant-garde cubist work by Braque and Picasso which he dimly understands. Vincent is the Lee Harvey Oswald of the art world, destined for infamy.

The Mona Lisa was indeed “stolen” in 1910, a year prior to the famous 1911 heist.

The building blocks to Santlofer’s novel are all true. The Mona Lisa was, in fact, “stolen” a year prior to the celebrated heist by Vincent Peruggia. Santlofer provides a news clipping of the story that sort of just came and went in 1910 but, without a doubt, documented a robbery of some kind. It’s a fine piece of detective work on Santlofer’s part as it doesn’t readily come up on a casual internet search. For whatever reason, that story ended up an odd blip without a follow-up. Nothing was ever officially said again about any theft. Not until the story that would not go away, the celebrated story of 1911. It is this incongruous situation with the ignored “theft” of 1910 that has fed countless rumors and conspiracy theories. It is this stranger-than-fiction phenomena that was just waiting to be plucked and processed into Santlofer’s latest delightful page-turner.

For more information, and how to buy this book, go to Sourcebooks.

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August 15, 2021 · 12:15 pm

Review: ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF HELL II: The Conquest of Heaven

ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF HELL II

ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF HELL II: The Conquest of Heaven, A Demonic History of the Future Concerning the Celestial Realm and the Angelic Race Which Infests It

Martin Olson. Illustrations: Tony Millionaire & Mahendra Singh. Feral House. 2021. 224pp. $24.99

Martin Olson is one of the best humorists around. Olson is known around Hollywood as one of the nicest and most hard-working of comedy writers. His special brand of satire has made its way to numerous comedy series on HBO, CBS, Showtime, Comedy Central, Disney, and FX. His last book was the critically-acclaimed Encyclopaedia of Hell, which includes a road map for a full-scale demonic invasion of Earth. Now, Olson tops himself with a sequel, The Conquest of Heaven, with Satan leading a coup of Heaven to replace God. Olson’s wry and relentless humor echoes Mark Twain and Ambrose Bierce.

Lord Satan dreams the Hell Cosmos.

This much-anticipated sequel picks up where Olson left off, writing again in the voice of Satan, we follow the Dark Lord’s latest scheme. Conquering Earth was mere child’s play when it comes to taking on the Almighty’s digs. And it’s not long before Satan runs into some difficulties.

After Hell’s army conquers Insignificant Earth and devours the human race in a celebratory feast, Lord Satan reveals that he will now journey deep into the universe to find the throne of the despised Creator. There Satan will depose God and take his rightful place as Emperor of Existence. Now, the secret sauce to making the story work hinges upon the voice of Satan. Again, that’s where the comparisons to literary giants like Mark Twain and Ambrose Bierce come into play. These guys satisfied that career high of nailing it, getting to channel Satan, as it were. And so Olson returns to those dizzying heights with his new book. Let’s dig in and see how he does it.

Lord Zyk battles the ghost of Abra Kadab.

First, you need to establish the character and, in Satan’s case, we’re talking about both a sophisticated creature and an egomaniac at an astronomical level. Satan is supposed to be all-knowing. But he’s also arrogant and pompous. Olson’s Satan maintains an other-worldly tone, full of regal turns of phrase and douchebag observations. In this excerpt, Satan has just set hoof on Heaven:

Yes, it was all Heavenly. All exactly what I hated.

I had come prepared with eye filters to screen out hideous beauty like the fountain. But I was unprepared for the audio component poisoning the air around me. Each festoon of flowers resonated with a different vibratory tone. Together, they emitted a hideously majestic symphony, a loathsome atmosphere of perfect harmony. Its precise overtones made my ears bleed. When I inhaled, the flowers’ sweetness produced cognitive dissonance with the natural filth that composed my lungs. I swooned, heaved deeply, and vomited the remains of a virgin I’d eaten into the azaleas. It was confirmed: perfect harmony was an unbearable toxin to my soul.

Satan is not exactly an easy guy to accomodate, even under ideal conditions, and here he is on arguably his greatest quest. Determined to discover the origin of his own creation, and to murder God, Satan must endure a series of obstacles in God’s Library akin to Alice in Wonderland, as well as match wits with a demented nun. And that’s just part of it, all leading to the shocking secret at the core of Creation. Could it have something to do with Satan? There’s a very good chance of that. To add some extra spice, there’s some other characters thrown into the mix like the equally pompous Lord Zyk and the wayward demon, Abra Kadab. The main thing is the journey which Olson masterfully keeps moving along. In this excerpt, Satan is dueling with a possessed book which has just lopped off his head. He’s later surprised to find out which book he’d been fighting:

Using a combination of my teeth and the vicissitudes of momentum, I climbed up my leg and torso until I reached the bloody stump of my severed neck. Through rapid licking, I then self-cauterized the wound, reconnecting my head to my body, and glared down at the culpable book.

Ironically, or perhaps not, the book that had decapitated me was a novelty edition of my own repugnant masterpiece of evil, Encycolpeadia of Hell, its ancient cover splattered with rose-red, black and purple coagulations of my royal demon blood.

What else might stand a chance against Satan but the very book prior to Olson’s latest misadventure with Satan? This kind of humor will delight readers of any age. Just think of vintage MAD Magazine. Sure, for the youngest readers, there’s the obvious parental discretion to keep in mind. This is, after all, a most unabashed Satan we’re dealing with here. The fangs. The claws. And everything else is all hanging out. But no risk of any exorcism! Honestly, if your kid is reading this, you can thank God that the kid has got good taste.

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