Books: Back to the Gore of Yore

A tall gray-haired man of distinguished appearance was browsing in a paperback bookstore. Balzac, Eliot, James, Kafka, Proust—all at once his eye lighted on a muscle-plated male glaring out of a black background. The slash, in big red letters, read: DOC

SAVAGE, THE MAN OF BRONZE! Startled, the browser glanced left and right; nobody was looking. Then with a furtive movement he snatched The Man of Bronze off its shelf and, slipping it deftly under a copy of Hazlitt's essays, strolled thoughtfully toward the cashier. Doc Savage? If you are over 40, you don't...