[Bookpossum]

Ah, “Springtime for Hitler and Germany” - now there’s a song!

I find Fry a very charming and witty person, obviously very intelligent and widely read. So I went in to the book with high expectations based on all of that. There were certainly good parts to the book, but I just expected it to be so much better, and I’m sure a good editor could have helped to make it so.

It’s an interesting question whether it would have been published, at any rate in its present form, if it was by Steve Burns or whoever. I don’t know anything much about the publishing industry, but I believe it is very hard indeed for a book by an unknown to get into print.

I recently read a book of short stories by the actor Tom Hanks, and while they were okay, they were nothing really startlingly good, and again I wondered if they would have been published if he wasn’t already well known.