Reader’s Diary

Walter Boyne

This is an interesting book, but it’s not much of a novel. All the interest comes from the history, to the extent that I soon started wondering if my time wouldn’t be better spent with a biography of the Wrights. I did come away from reading it with an appreciation of the magnitude of Orville and Wilbur’s accomplishment. Powered flight is so much a part of our world that it’s easy to forget how hard it was to achieve it. The Wrights did it - ahead of some tough competition - thanks to dogged persistence and a disciplined, orderly pursuit of their goal.

David Kushner

This is high-tech business history told in classic rockumentary style. Two young outsiders, John Carmack and John Romero meet, form a company (Id Software) produce a string of hits (”Doom”, “Quake”, etc.) and have a tragic falling out. The only thing missing is Yoko Ono.

In spite of the sometimes-awkward writing this is a must-read for anybody interested in computer gaming. Kushner never loses sight of the fact that Id’s huge success and wild office antics were backed by a lot of intense study and hard work, especially on John Carmack’s part.

William McKeen

In 2001, Bill McKeen took his 18-year-old son on a trip down the length of Highway 61, from the Canadian border to New Orleans. This book is an account of that trip. McKeen’s not a bad writer, and the book is filled with interesting stories about places visited and people met. It’s also filled with a lot of self-pity and liberal guilt.

McKeen seems to want the reader to feel sorry for him because his divorce prevented him from spending as much time with his kids as he wished. Since he also brags that “Playboy” once voted him one of “America’s eight most fun professors”, presumably for the drunken parties he held for students, I suspect the kids were better off with their mom. Sorry Bill - you’re trying to sound cool but you’re just another boomer Peter Pan who doesn’t want to grow up.

Then there’s the racism. McKeen makes lots of comments about “whiteboy” fans of blues, “whiteboy” attempts at playing “black” music, and “whiteboy” tourists in the Delta. He’s a racist who is blind to his racism because it’s directed at his own race. It’s a 60’s attitude that Bill hasn’t outgrown.

Naturally, given the title and northern origins of the route, Bob Dylan is a topic of many of McKeen’s musings. Coincidentally, I saw Dylan perform with the Dead a couple of weeks after finishing the book. Dylan, unlike McKeen (who seems unaware the Dylan isn’t as dead as Robert Johnson), is still fresh, doing new stuff and doing old stuff in new ways. McKeen should pay attention, he might learn something - something about growing up.

Henry Morton Robinson

They don’t write them like this any more. “The Cardinal” is a richly detailed and compelling fictional biography of Stephen Fermoyle, a young Irish-American from Boston who becomes a cardinal. Fermoyle is a great character with realistic weaknesses and admirable strengths. He’s not a saint (though the book has at least one saintly), but he remains faithful to the Church and to his vows.

The novel is full of interesting characters and dramatic situations in settings ranging from the southern United States to Rome. In addition to being a good story, it’s a nice portrait of pre-Vatican II Catholic America. It’s not “Bells of St. Mary’s“: Father Fermoyle has to deal with ethnic rivalries, abortion, and a number of other issues that we think of as post-1960s phenomena. A lot of the book’s drama comes his reactions to those issues, reactions that are informed by his faith.

“The Cardinal” is one of the best novels I’ve read in a long time.

James Brady

This one sounded promising: the story of a marine from college through World War II in the Pacific and the Korean War. It doesn’t live up to its promise. It’s tedious and the characters are poorly drawn and ultimately uninteresting.