Don Adams has passed on. Damn.
I grew up with that curious generation just at the beginning of the Internet (i.e., the Usenet days) and near the end of UHF saturation (before I gave up television). And Adams was one of my unspoken comic heroes. If I learned anything from watching Get Smart, it was this: deadpan ardor with dollops of sincerity can get you through a lot of life’s unexpected scrapes. It didn’t help that Smart worked with a damn sexy and damn smart gal named Agent 99.
The Maxwell Smart persona was dug up somewhat with the Inspector Gadget cartoons, but Gadget was only Adams’ voice. And while Adams’ voice, in itself, was intoxicatin, you needed the expressive eyes and the benign look of confusion to get the full schtick. It was not dissimilar to John Astin’s Gomez Adams, an equally exuberant comic figure. But where Gomez invited destruction, Maxwell Smart unwittingly did so. So it’s Maxwell Smart that I remember and I mourn, wondering if there is a single comic actor (let alone an ambitious producer actually concerned with developing a comic character) who can ever fill Adams’ shoes.
Magic Hours by Tom Bissell: This marvelous collection of essays chronicles everything from film shoots to novelists rescued from oblivion. (The essay on the Underground Literary Alliance, with its portrait of raucous factions, unexpectedly reveals how soft today's literary world has become.) But if you peer between the cracks of these smart pieces, you may very well see how cultural lives are formed from the most unexpected life choices. And as we follow Bissell's development as a writer over the years, that goes for Bissell as well. (
Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway: Harkaway's latest novel greatly improves on his previous book, The Gone-Away World, which I'm already on record as praising. Angelmaker adopts genre elements without ever feeling like a genre book, and it leads me to believe that Harkaway is well on his way to a narrative grace close to China Miéville's. Yet inexplicably this very fun book, which includes an eightysomething badass named Edie Banister, a mysterious mechanical object that may destroy the world, farcical scenarios involving lawyers and the police, and some unexpectedly moving moments about fatherhood, doesn't appear to be getting much attention in American newspapers. Nothing from the snobs at The New York Times Book Review, nothing from The Washington Post. And since I can't get Harkaway on Bat Segundo, I hope this Jump Up and Down mention gets you hopping as well.
The Age of Insight by Eric Kandel: Unless you're really pressed for time, forget Jonah Lehrer. If you want to understand creativity and its relationship to neuroscience, then the bowtie-wearing Nobel laureate is your man. In addition to being a physically beautiful book (you will drool over many of the paintings), there are helpful overviews on optical illusions, science, biographical backgrounds, and many vital figures from the Vienna Secession. Kandel's enthusiasm (and his call for greater unity between the humanities and science) is contagious.