{"id":602,"date":"2004-04-13T08:49:56","date_gmt":"2004-04-13T15:49:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/2004\/04\/airplane_reading\/"},"modified":"2004-04-13T08:49:56","modified_gmt":"2004-04-13T15:49:56","slug":"airplane_reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2004\/04\/airplane_reading.html","title":{"rendered":"AIRPLANE READING"},"content":{"rendered":"

Blogging as self-promotion: A book review of mine appeared Sunday in the Chicago
\nSun-Times:<\/P>
\n

It’s hard to say which comes off worse in Herman Wouk’s latest novel, his first
\nin a decade: the U.S. Congress or the American press. “A
\nHole in Texas”<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> offers the choice between two emblematic stereotypes:
\na red-faced opportunist who heads the House Armed Services Committee and a mustachioed
\ninvestigative reporter for the Washington Post. Both are melodramatic, even comical cliches to
\nserve the plot. But what a plot!
\n

Wouk tells the tale of a colossal scientific project in particle physics, the Texas-based
\nSuperconducting Super Collider, done in by self-interested politicians who invariably mislead a
\nclueless public with the help of weaselly journalists; meantime, news of a secret Chinese
\nexperiment that has found an elusive subatomic particle, the Higgs boson, touches off a national
\npanic about an apocalyptic Boson Bomb.<\/P>
\n

The 88-year-old author, remarkable for his creativity in old age, has a canny knack for the
\ntopical and for touching all the bases. Though conventional wisdom colors the texture of the
\nnovel, it speeds the chapters along like, well, a superconductor. You can easily finish “A Hole in
\nTexas” between the takeoff and landing of a transcontinental flight, and without
\nskimming.<\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n

<\/P>
\n

Read the rest here<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A>. One reader already has. He writes: “My recent
\nairplane reads have been Dan Brown novels. It’s amazing how he writes the same basic book
\nagain and again and still gets paid. I wanna do a similiar ‘find and replace’ style of writing and
\nmake my millions as well.”<\/P>
\n

Most excellently well put. The breathless, deathless prose of “The Da Vinci
\nCode”<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> reads to me like an Ivy League boy’s adventure. Wouk isn’t
\nmuch of a prose stylist either. Next to Brown, however, he’s another Dr. Johnson.<\/P>
\n

Postscript:<\/STRONG> Ryan McGee writes: “I always like reviews that have
\nenergy. Mine sometimes replace ‘energy’ with ‘drunken stupor,’ like when I tackled the high
\nculture of ‘The Nick and Jessica variety hour.'”<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A><\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blogging as self-promotion: A book review of mine appeared Sunday in the Chicago Sun-Times: It’s hard to say which comes off worse in Herman Wouk’s latest novel, his first in a decade: the U.S. Congress or the American press. “A Hole in Texas” offers the choice between two emblematic stereotypes: a red-faced opportunist who heads […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-602","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-9I","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}