Author: Brian J. Noggle

I bought this book at the Kirkwood Book Fair this year, which is odd, since I bought I Ought To Be In Pictures last year. I have to wonder if the owner is trickling out his or her library at a slow pace, or if I just missed it last year.

This book isn’t a complete enough play for me; I mean, it’s about a man’s experience at military training in 1943 and some things that happens there. From the outset, we don’t know what’s at stake, and then something happens, and the play is over, framed with a last scene very like the first scene. There are some amusing lines and situations, but ultimately, I’m not sure the play says anything or leads anywhere.

As some of you know, this is a sequel to Brighton Beach Memoirs; both were made into movies in the middle 1980s. I saw parts of this movie on Showtime, and I read excerpts of the first in Weekly Reader, for crying out loud. How old am I?

I must have bought this book for a buck at the Webster Groves Library book fair this year; it’s a recent acquisition, so of course, I read it soon. It’s the first nonfiction book I’ve finished in over a month (the last being The Prize Winner’s Handbook, and heck’s pecks, 1980 and 1993–they were almost the same year!)

Wow, I don’t mean to make you feel old, but you do realize that Seinfeld’s television show has been off network television for almost a decade, don’t you?

This book takes some of his topical humor and presents it in prose form. Now, I’ve not been much of a Seinfeld fan, so I don’t know how well the book works when he presents it; however, this book really only made me chuckle aloud a handful of times. The rest was wry, witty sometimes, but not what I’d call funny. As I go on in my quest to find really funny books by comedians (as you know, I’ve read Chris Rock, Bill Cosby, Dennis Miller, Rita Rudner, Sinbad, Judy Tenuta, Tim Allen, and so on, and so on). Of these, Bill Cosby and Dennis Miller come across as the best because they’re storytellers or crafters of turns of phrase, and Rita Rudner’s up there. Tim Allen’s books (I Am Not Really Here and Don’t Stand Too Close To A Naked Man) aren’t so much based on his standup as booklength musings. Seinfeld falls in the middle of the pack with Chris Rock, Judy Tenuta, but probably above Sinbad in the book department. There’s something to be said for showmanship, I guess.

As I read, I couldn’t help but think that these books are something akin to riddle books for adults. Apparently, I’m hooked, and I’ll keep picking them up.

Worth it? Well, as much for a 1990s time piece to show what were the concerns of that halycon era when Seinfeld ruled the world. A brief age of innocence lost like most are.

PS: A note to future historians, ca 2010: No, you’re thinking of Richard Lewis. Jerry Seinfeld was a different guy entirely whose popularity peaked a whole 8 years after Richard Lewis. But I see how you could make the mistake.

I saw the Dean Martin Matt Helm movies before I found this book at a book fair, cheap, so I didn’t know whether to expect the Austin Powers tone in the novel. It’s more of a straightforward paperback thriller: Matt Helm, counteragent, finds himself framed as a traitor, so he runs south to Mexico with the wife of a tycoon. Her brother was a copatriot of Matt’s, and he was killed when captured during the frame-up. There, Helm finds details about their mission that was about to start before the frame-up takes place: kill an assassin who has his eyes on a revolutionary Mexican general.

Helm relies on assistance from a Mexican colonel he trusts from a previous mission, but too many people are shooting at Helm for his comfort or for his trust.

The voice is a bit wordy, probably looking for a certain braggadocio in the character. The pacing a bit slow, and the first person narrator keeps things a little close to chest. The plot itself is a little too clever for its own good and relies on a bit of Helm making cognitive leaps that I wouldn’t have seen coming. The result is a second tier paperback thriller, way below John D. MacDonald’s work, but good enough for some throwaway time.

Apparently, Helm has a legion of fans; perhaps the earlier books in the series are better.