Presently, having escaped from Roth's My Life As a Man, I am reading Kenneth Roberts's Northwest Passage, a historical novel first published in 1937, which centers on the exploits of Rogers's Rangers during and after the French and Indian War. As I mentioned in a previous post, I started reading this with my son after we visited Fort Ticonderoga, but he has since gotten distracted by Will and Abe's Guide to the Universe, leaving me to continue on alone.

Although Northwest Passage remains an excellent novel to read while wilting on an old bench seat at the repair shop as the guys avoid getting around to changing the oil in my car, I must say that it is not as good as it was when I first read it as a teenager. Langdon, the non-historical main character, a would-be artist from Kittery, Maine, who joins the army to avoid going to jail for his seditous yet moral comments about the New Hampshire government, is thus far rather priggish and irritating, although his attractively lumpish pals, Hunk and Cap, continue to maintain their charm. Nonetheless, I fully expect all the forest escapes and Ticonderoga scenes to be just as exciting as they ever were, and I'm on the whole pleased to be reading this book again.

But the cover blurbs are giving me pause. I should mention that my edition is a 1966 Fawcett Crest pulp paperback, yellowed and crumbling, purchased, if I remember correctly, for a dime from a willowy middle-aged guy in black-plastic-rimmed glasses who was hovering in the doorway of a farmhouse crammed with used paperbacks somewhere on a back hill in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania. The year might have been 1978. Now let me quote you some of the cover text:

"The Greatest Novel of America Ever Written"

"A thundering novel of the men and women who risked their lives to forge a new country. Through these exciting pages sweeps the grand panorama of America in the making."

"GENUINE MAGNIFICENCE . . . moves on a plane of understanding and perception that only the best kind of historical fiction achieves. --Bernard DeVoto, Saturday Review"

"AN ENORMOUS TALE IN EVERY SENSE OF THE WORD--IN LENGTH, IN BREADTH OF ACTION AND INTENSITY . . . AN IMPRESSIVE BOOK--A TREMENDOUS STORY" --Chicago Tribune"

All I can say is that it's a little embarrassing to carry around this book in public, so it's a good thing I'm spending the morning at an auto shop where they don't ask, "What are you reading?"