I write this blog with the idea that Google could announce at any moment that Blogger was going to be terminated within a certain time period and that I would be forced to cut and paste the entire blog into a word document or documents. I've been consolidating for years now but I'm still at 900 posts and I'd like to be at something like 500, with half of those being current posts. In the 2000's we are really getting into recent history and even the beginning of this blog which goes back to the middle of this decade.
Originally posted 7/6/16
The Plot Against America (2004)
by Philip Roth
I bought The Plot Against America in an independent book store in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, essentially to read on the 6 hour plane ride between Boston and Los Angeles, which I did, with time to spare. I've abandoned the Kindle for travel reading for two main reasons. First, I like to go to book stores when I travel and buy books, preferably with a book mark, as a souvenir of places I've been- not a book about that place, just from that place. Second, when you are talking about books from, say, the 1960's forward, they are more expensive on Kindle than what you can find them for in Used book stores.
For example, I bought The Plot Against America in Portsmouth as a remaindered book, new with the exception of a red mark across the bottom that indicated it had been returned to the publisher, probably from a chain book store. It cost seven dollars, and I got to feel like a good guy. On Amazon, the Kindle version of this book is eleven dollars. It's a 300 page book in paperback, with thirteen point type and generous margins. The presence of a remaindered copy of The Plot Against America a decade after it was published (and the classic one cent hardback copies on Amazon) raises the question about whether it was too soon for the 1001 Books to select it in their 2006 edition. The Plot Against America was one of only eleven titles removed between 2008 and 2010, and the first of those eleven that I've read.
Therefore, The Plot Against America qualified as a canonical title in the precincts of the 1001 Books project for under five years. That is not a classic. It's an admission that the editors included it the first edition by mistakes, and they rectified that mistake quickly. Also on the list of 2010 removals are two other books that were popular upon initial publication: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay. by Michael Chabon.
I would imagine that this is familiar territory for the sort of people reading this blog. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time is actually a book I've consciously avoided reading because it sounds annoying. I liked The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay and The Yiddish Policemen's Union (2012) but passed on Telegraph Avenue (2012) despite growing up there. Perhaps because I grew up there. All these titles being discussed are in the rare cross over of books that are well regarded by critics and best sellers. Like the other books here, The Plot Against America takes the familiar approach of combining "high" literary technique with genre fiction plot. In this case, it's a variety of "What if Hitler won World War II?" history based speculative fiction.
Unusually, while The Plot Against America was embraced both by high minded critics and the reading public, it was ignored by speculative fiction enthusiasts. The "what-if" addressed by Roth is a world where Charles Lindbergh runs as an isolationist Republican candidate in the American Presidential campaign of 1940... and beats Roosevelt, who was running for his third term.
Lindbergh quickly moves to make a preemptive peace with Germany and Japan, and the books carries the reader through to when Hitler betrayed Stalin and attacked Russia. The characters are wholly familiar to readers of Roth's other works, an extended family of non-specific Ashkenazi Jews living in New Jersey. The narrator is a Roth stand in, the ten year old boy who is the youngest of two brothers. The father is an insurance salesman, which, I believe is also the occupation of the father in Portnoy's Complaint. In fact, having recently read Portnoy's Complaint I can say that the similarities in that department are striking.
The larger trend of literary authors delving into genre fiction, typically as a ploy to actually sell some books (and hopefully some film or tv rights) is deeply interesting to me, and seems to be a point of similarity between the music industry and the literature/fiction industry. It's one thing to make garbage and sell it, and it's another to make art and not sell it, but making something that people say is art AND want to buy is the sweet spot of the cultural industrial complex.
The Plot Against America (2004)
by Philip Roth
I bought The Plot Against America in an independent book store in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, essentially to read on the 6 hour plane ride between Boston and Los Angeles, which I did, with time to spare. I've abandoned the Kindle for travel reading for two main reasons. First, I like to go to book stores when I travel and buy books, preferably with a book mark, as a souvenir of places I've been- not a book about that place, just from that place. Second, when you are talking about books from, say, the 1960's forward, they are more expensive on Kindle than what you can find them for in Used book stores.
For example, I bought The Plot Against America in Portsmouth as a remaindered book, new with the exception of a red mark across the bottom that indicated it had been returned to the publisher, probably from a chain book store. It cost seven dollars, and I got to feel like a good guy. On Amazon, the Kindle version of this book is eleven dollars. It's a 300 page book in paperback, with thirteen point type and generous margins. The presence of a remaindered copy of The Plot Against America a decade after it was published (and the classic one cent hardback copies on Amazon) raises the question about whether it was too soon for the 1001 Books to select it in their 2006 edition. The Plot Against America was one of only eleven titles removed between 2008 and 2010, and the first of those eleven that I've read.
Therefore, The Plot Against America qualified as a canonical title in the precincts of the 1001 Books project for under five years. That is not a classic. It's an admission that the editors included it the first edition by mistakes, and they rectified that mistake quickly. Also on the list of 2010 removals are two other books that were popular upon initial publication: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay. by Michael Chabon.
I would imagine that this is familiar territory for the sort of people reading this blog. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time is actually a book I've consciously avoided reading because it sounds annoying. I liked The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay and The Yiddish Policemen's Union (2012) but passed on Telegraph Avenue (2012) despite growing up there. Perhaps because I grew up there. All these titles being discussed are in the rare cross over of books that are well regarded by critics and best sellers. Like the other books here, The Plot Against America takes the familiar approach of combining "high" literary technique with genre fiction plot. In this case, it's a variety of "What if Hitler won World War II?" history based speculative fiction.
Unusually, while The Plot Against America was embraced both by high minded critics and the reading public, it was ignored by speculative fiction enthusiasts. The "what-if" addressed by Roth is a world where Charles Lindbergh runs as an isolationist Republican candidate in the American Presidential campaign of 1940... and beats Roosevelt, who was running for his third term.
Lindbergh quickly moves to make a preemptive peace with Germany and Japan, and the books carries the reader through to when Hitler betrayed Stalin and attacked Russia. The characters are wholly familiar to readers of Roth's other works, an extended family of non-specific Ashkenazi Jews living in New Jersey. The narrator is a Roth stand in, the ten year old boy who is the youngest of two brothers. The father is an insurance salesman, which, I believe is also the occupation of the father in Portnoy's Complaint. In fact, having recently read Portnoy's Complaint I can say that the similarities in that department are striking.
The larger trend of literary authors delving into genre fiction, typically as a ploy to actually sell some books (and hopefully some film or tv rights) is deeply interesting to me, and seems to be a point of similarity between the music industry and the literature/fiction industry. It's one thing to make garbage and sell it, and it's another to make art and not sell it, but making something that people say is art AND want to buy is the sweet spot of the cultural industrial complex.
Originally posted 5/17/17
The Sea (2005)
by John Banville
A plot description, which I have cribbed from the post-Booker prize win London Guardian review below, does not do The Sea justice:
Originally posted 2/7/18
The Blind Assassin (2000)
by Margaret Atwood
The path to literary greatness takes many twists and turns. The major milestones I've seen repeated in the 20th century are:
1. The break through debut novel.
2. The major prize winning novel.
3. The blockbuster movie or television version of a novel.
4. The best-seller.
I think an easy, fair and accurate way to evaluate canon eligibility is to hand out points for each of those four, maybe add a fifth for "public celebrity status" and then just see where you are at with each author. I think you'd have to adjust the value of each best seller downward to account for authors who have nothing but best sellers- there is a whole shelf full of "airport thriller/mystery" type authors who have dozens of best-sellers, a couple good movies and no prizes.
If you look at a writer like Margaret Atwood, who is currently sitting in third place in the odds table for next years Nobel Prize in Literature, you can see the path to canonical status in action. Specifically, in the past year she had her first blockbuster television version, the award wining The Handmaiden's Tale. The Blind Assassin was another major achievement, it won the Booker Prize in 2000. As a Canadian, Atwood is ineligible for the United States based Pulitzer and National Book Award- and you'd have to think that given her eligibility she would have won, see Annie Proulx, who won a Pulitzer and a National Book Award for The Shipping News, which basically takes place in Canada.
I haven't gone back and looked at the contemporaneous coverage of the Prize, but it looks like it was a weak year- with a minor Ishiguro book and a bunch of titles I don't even recognize. The Blind Assassin wasn't particularly well received by United States critics- the New York Times straight out panned it, and I would imagine the Booker really gave The Blind Assassin a sales boost stateside.
As for the substance of The Blind Assassin, it's a work of historical fiction, set in the same Southern Ontario landscape that figures prominently in many of Atwood's books. Iris Chase, the protagonist and narrator, discusses her past, with an emphasis on the relationship between Iris and Laura, her deceased sister. She also throws in a sci-fi twist, with a fantasy story-within-a-story whose authorship is a major element of the larger story. I read it respectfully, but I have to say that I agree with early critics, who found it sloppily written and over-long. 550 pages!
But hey, if Atwood wins the Nobel Prize in Literature, this will be one of her canonical works.
Published 2/7/18
Ignorance (2000)
by Milan Kundera
Ignorance is the fourth Kundera title on the original 1001 Books list, the first since The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984) and it gives Kundera one book in every decade except the 1990's. The other two are The Joke (1967) and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (1979). Similar to his other books, Ignorance deals with the impact of Communism on the residents of the Czech Republic (then Czechslovakia) and the various decisions people made. Here, the narrator is a female emigre, returning for the first time after the fall of Communism, where she hooks up with an old flame after a random encounter. The punchline is that her partner doesn't remember who she is. I mean, it's not a punchline, like all Kundera novels, the plot takes a back seat to the solo philosophizing of your typical Kundera protagonist.
I would say Kundera is over-represented on the first list. I would give him two books, The Joke and The Unbearable Lightness of Being and cut the other two. How much European existentialism do we need? Just watch The Wings of Desire by Wim Wenders and you've pretty much got it.
Published 2/11/18
City of God (2000)
by E.L. Doctorow
I guess E.L. Doctorow is still canon, even though I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone outside a graduate course in American literature who might be enthusiastic about his inclusion. He's got the genuine, late twentieth century break out book, The Book of Daniel, he has two mid/late career multi-dimensional culture properties, Billy Bathgate and Ragtime. City of God, then is Doctorow's fourth best novel, and probably the one you would have to cut from the next version.
If you were looking for a periodization of American literature between, say, 1980 and 2020, a natural dividing line is the events of September 11th, 2001. For a couple of reasons- first, it's within a couple of years of the twenty year generation line between 1980 and 2000, second, New York City is so dramatically over represented in American literary fiction that the fact that 9/11 took place in New York City magnifies the significance of that particular event.
City of God, which is more or less a "New York City" novel of the pre 9/11 era- almost the last, I'm thinking, joins a shelf whose most prominent representative is Paul Auster, American writers influenced by the existentialist influenced European tradition of post- World War II fiction. Doctorow maintains experimental flourishes without alienating the reader, he confuses the reader, but no in a way that distracts you from the emotions of his character.
But, I think , the major division is that pre 9/11 fiction is set in a world where evil, more or less, doesn't exist. If evil does exist it is the evil of the increasingly distant past, i.e. the Holocaust, which provides the dramatic element for Doctorow's thin plot.
I think maybe City of God made the 1001 Book List because it is "late" Doctorow and there is a spiritual theme that is mostly absent from his sprawling Americana epics. To his credit, he pulls it together at the end. I'm just left wondering who is reading Doctorow in 2018.
Published 2/13/18
Spring Flowers, Spring Frost (2002)
by Ismail Kadare
Ismail Kadare is Albania's contribution to the world literary canon, one of a small group of Balkan-area novelists to penetrate the English language market for literary fiction. Most of Kadare's books were originally written in Albanian, and simultaneously published in Albanian and French, and the English language push has come via translations of the French editions.
Mark Gurabardhi is the protagonist- a young artist living in post-Communist Albania. He has an up and down relationship with his artist model, she is vexed by her familial entanglement in the revival of the medieval "blood laws" AKA "the kanun" of Albania. Kadare alternates the main narrative with chapters that are more allegorical in nature, including the "real" story of a young woman forced to marry a snake.
Published 2/13/18
Pastoralia (2000)
by George Saunders
Pastoralia is a collection of short stories from Booker Prize winning novelist George Saunders. Now that the question of "but can he write a novel?" has been definitely answered in the affirmative, short story collections like Pastoralia no longer have to shoulder the burden of Saunders reputation. The title story, about a man living inside a "human zoo" is the clear stand out, the other stories traverse similar thematic territory- humans disconnected and alienated from their surroundings, often carrying on internal monologues that ignore the outside world.
Published 2/14/18
An Obedient Father (2000)
Akhil Sharma
Speaking of Indian-themed novels from the end of the 20th century. Another debut novel, no less. Like Arundhati Roy, Sharma waited over a decade to write another book, Family Life, published in 2014. You really risk...losing your audience...when you wait more than five years between putting out works like books, movies or albums that seek to balance serious and popular art. Obviously for pure pop the audience attention span is shorter- the idea of a work a year has historically been considered optimum, although now a multi-market promotional cycle including publication and some kind of supporting touring appearances can run two or three years The cycle takes different shapes for different art forms.
Of course, the financial consequences of a "hit" in any of these cycles lasts far longer than the promotional cycle itself. It can be decades, a lifetime of income. I'm not saying that is the case here, Sharma. Having a "hit" in the literary fiction world is something like getting Best New Music in Pitchfork: You can parlay it into big money, but by itself it's not worth a lifetime of financial security.
An Obedient Father is most notable for its depiction of the most memorable villain in Indian literary fiction, Ram Karan, a widower and "bag man" for a local Congress Party functionary. The corruption in his job is mirrored by corruption in his private life, notably an incestuous dalliance with his now adult daughter, Anita, who is herself widowed and living in Karan's tiny flat with her own daughter, Asha.
The events take place against the backdrop of the assassination of Rajiv Ghandi, the last representative of the Congress Party dynasty. His death was a crucial turning point in the rise of the rightist Hindu fundamentalist party BJP. This rise is mirrored in the plot of An Obedient Father, as Karan's mentor is induced to betray the Congress Party and run for office as a representative of the BJP. Karan tries to navigate the rapids of politics while the consequences of his behavior with Anita, graphically depicted in the text of the book, come home to roost after twenty years of denial.
The 1990's were a break out for Indian literature in the West, as well as the literature of South Asia. Sharma is at the tail end of the initial post-Rushdie explosion, but he also represents an evolution, with a level of graphic detail absent from earlier books. Sharma's India stinks, metaphorically and actually, and it is hard not to be repelled by this world. Call it progress.
Published 2/18/18
The Human Stain (2000)
by Philip Roth
The most amazing aspect of Philip Roth's career, aside from the fact of his never winning the Nobel Prize in Literature, is his late period productivity. Within the first edition of the 1001 Books list, he is represented by Portnoy's Complaint (1969), his breakthrough. From 1972 the editors decided to include The Breast. Then, bam, it's the 1990's, and Roth has Operation Shylock (1993), Sabbath's Theatre (1995), American Pastoral (1997), this book and The Plot Against America (2004). He lost four of those titles in the first revision. It makes sense in that almost every author who is represented by four or more titles in the first list loses half of those en route to the second, no doubt to allow more diverse voices into the canon making exercise. Replacing four Philip Roth novels between editions makes sense, the first list represents a kind of "before," and then subsequent revisions represent reactions to that first list.
The Human Stain, along Portnoy's Complaint are his two books that are considered "core" i.e. never removed, titles from the whole run of 1001 Books revisions. That would make The Human Stain Roth's best book, since Portnoy's Complaint is his first. "Best and First" might be a maxim for would-be canon creators seeking to eliminate multiple works from the same creator. The Human Stain is a "Nathan Zuckerman" novel, as is American Pastoral. Nathan Zuckerman is the main narrator in this series of Roth books, a Roth-esque- though not actually "Philip Roth"- that's a different set of Philip Roth novels, represented in the first edition of the 1001 Books list with Operation Shylock.
Zuckerman, in both The Human Stain and American Pastoral is a succesful writer living in semi-retirement in rural New York, in the vicinity of a small liberal arts college. He is single, no children, impotent and incontinent as the result of prostate cancer surgery. In the Nathan Zuckerman novel he relates the stories of people he encounters. In The Human Stain that person is Coleman Silk, the long-time Professor and Dean of nearby Athena College, recently retired in the aftermath of a "only in the 90's" struggle over Silk's use of the word "spook" to describe two perpetually absent African American students.
His disgrace is followed shortly by the death of his much beloved wife. Silk takes up with a local woman, an illiterate former run away who works at his former school as a janitor. This relationship causes an uproar in the small community. Silk, meanwhile is concealing a life time secret, and one known to any reader who knows anything of this book- he is black, born black, and has lived his life as a white man.
More apparent in The Human Strain than in American Pastoral is the extraordinarily sophisticated use of Nathan Zuckerman as both a major character, narrator and WRITER of the text presented to the reader. This last bit allows the insertion of entire chapters written from the perspective of characters besides Zuckerman- giving The Human Stain incredible depth, while also maintaining the strong narrative voice of Zuckerman himself. Thus, Silk's secret- that he is African-American passing for white, is revealed first in a chapter from the final book written by Zuckerman about the events of The Human Stain- written from the perspective of Silk itself. Later, close to the end of the book, Zuckerman the character hears from Silk's sister the narrative that allows him to write the earlier portion of the book from the perspective of Silk himself.
The Human Stain also seems to be a kind of commentary on the career of Roth himself, by Roth, through Zuckerman. It's hard not to compare the kind of politically correct insanity that results in a professor being persecuted for using the term "spook" in class seems linked to the the failure of the Nobel Prize committee to recognize Roth's achievement.
Or, you know, maybe not. I'm sure Roth himself would laugh at that last observation.
Published 2/21/18
The Heart of Redness (2000)
by Zakes Mda
Zakes Mda is the kind of author I had in mind when I started reading all 1001 Books from the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die list. He is South African. I'd go so far as to say that he is little known inside the United States, with a higher profile in the UK. He's won some awards in the UK, particularly for this very book, which is about the amaXhosa people of South Africa and their past and present. Mda's narrative switches between the awakening of Camagu, a Westernized amaXhosa who has recently returned from 30 years of life in the United States to find his way in post-liberation South Africa.
Disappointments in the city related to his status as a returnee ("Where were you when we danced the freedom dance?" is the line that Camagu uses as short-hand fr his failure to land a job) lead him to the township of Qolorha-by-Sea, the point of origin for the Nongqawuse movement- a milenarian cult that led to the slaughter of large amounts of cattle by the amaXhosa in preparation for the imminent arrival of an earthly paradise. Camagu arrives in the late 20th century to find the people still split between "Believers" and "Unbelievers."
This disagreements are pushed to the fore when investors from Johannesburg arrive with plans to turn the unspoiled coast into a casino-resort. Meanwhile, Camagu finds love with Qukeswa, daughter of the leader of the Believers (those who still hold with the prophetess from the 19th century). Prominent in the local community is Dalton, the son of an English military officer, who speaks the local language better than many locals.
While Mda's prose style can be clunky, there is no missing the sophistication of his portrayal of this familiar debate of the development of special natural places. He links past to present in unpredictable ways and he avoids all of the prat-falls that accompany a century of white western Europeans writing about what dark-skinned people think.
Published 2/22/18The Devil and Miss Prym (2000)
by Paulo Coelho
Brazilian author Paulo Coelho has an astonishing 30 million fans on Facebook. That is pretty insane, considering that there are many recent Nobel Prize winning level authors who don't even have 10,000. With Coelho, any claim to canonical status starts with his extraordinarily large reading audience, rather than any kind of critical acclaim. The Alchemist is his best known book, much beloved by the type of people who hang "Live/Laugh/Love" type signs above their beds and place credence in astrology. In the mid 1990's, The Alchemist secured his international audience, but he's done nothing to disappoint since then, churning out a new book every couple of years.
I've consciously avoided reading any Paulo Coelho books before now. I've consciously avoided talking to people who read Paulo Coelho books, to the extent that I'm able. The Devil and Miss Prym, about a wealthy stranger who shows up in a remote Italian(?) village with a chilling proposition: If one person in the isolated village is murdered in the next three days, the village will receive ten gold bars, buried nearby. The visitor selects Miss Prym, an outsider working at the village inn, to convey the message to the village.
The Devil and Miss Prym was published in 1992, two years before the 1994 break out year for The Alchemist, which was itself published first in 1988. The US publication of the English translation arrived in 2000, a clear result of the success of The Alchemist in 1994- publishers go back and find earlier books that haven't been released in the United States, then release them in the US as if they are new works.
The whole book seemed ridiculous and I thought Coelho's non-specific internationalism was vague and dissatisfying in the same way a Hollywood movie can be vague and dissatisfying when it comes to portraying place.
by David Szalay
David Szalay had a break-out book in 2016, All That Man Is: A Novel, which made it to the 2016 Booker Prize Short-list. Cue the American re-issues of his earlier books which didn't get an American publisher when they were originally released.
London and the South-East is Szalay's first novel, published in 2008, finally published in the United States in October of last year. All That Man Is: A Novel, drew attention for it's experimental technique, with some critics going so far as to say it wasn't, in fact, a novel. London and the South-East, on the other hand, is very much a novel, a bildungsroman of a sort, set among the world of sales men specializing in selling ad space in trade magazines to international corporations. Szalay tips his thematic hand early on, when the narrator Paul Rainey, described as a "hapless anti-hero," makes a lengthy series of observations about the movie version of Glengarry Glen Ross and makes it clear that all the sales-men he runs with, a grotty bunch, as they might say in England, are equally influenced by the "example" of Glengarry Glen Ross.
You might accurately observe that London and the South-East is best summarized as "Glengarry Glen Ross meets the Office (UK version." Szalay, English though he may be, doesn't write in a recognizably English fashion, in the sense that he is not trying to portray a specific socio-economic-ehtnic group. Paul Rainey is recognizably English, but he is relatable to a potential American audience. I mean he doesn't have a drivers license, but still.
GrayWolf Press, his publisher, is a non-profit, so he is outside the orbit of the big three (big two?) of American publishing, but at least he's here. Maybe his next book will get a "major label" release in the US.
The Sea (2005)
by John Banville
A plot description, which I have cribbed from the post-Booker prize win London Guardian review below, does not do The Sea justice:
The story, such as it is, is narrated by one Max Morden (not quite, we are told quite late on, the name he was christened with), a widowed art historian, who is returning to a seaside boarding-house he once knew as a child on the cusp of adolescence. He has arrived there in order to deal with, in some roundabout way, the death of his wife from cancer. But the reason he lodges at Miss Vavasour's comically moribund guest-house is also because, when he was young, Something Happened there, and the novel only reveals what that was at the end. - London Guardian 2006
It's not even entirely clear that "Something Happened" there until the last 10 or 20 pages. For example, myself, not having read any summaries, was legitimately surprised at the revelation. That The Sea won the Booker Prize was itself- beating Zadie Smith and Kazuo Ishiguro- surprising. I think you can fairly ascribe the success of The Sea to Banville's ability to evoke the sparse prose of Samuel Beckett while developing a conventional narrative with a "twist" type ending. That is a winning formula, evidently.
Originally Posted 2/6/18
Super-Cannes (2000)
by J.G. Ballard
Make no mistake about it, J.G. Ballard is one of my favorite contemporary authors. Mostly because he's one of the 20th century authors who pioneered the concept of speculative fiction as literary fiction, escaping the confines of genre and emerging as a serious writer with serious ideas, but also someone who enjoys dsytopias and sci fi. This is one of my favorite themes of 20th century fiction, the elevation of non serious fiction into serious literature, how it happens, why it happens, the consequences of it happening.
Super-Cannes is often called a companion piece to his 1996 novel, , both set in hyper-modern developments in south-western Europe. In Cocaine Nights, the development is a "leisure world" for retired and semi-retired expatriates, living on the coast of Spain. In Super-Cannes, the development is a combination business park and residence for multi-national corporations. Both books cover the same territory: An outside is drawn to the community by accident, in Cocaine Nights it is the untimely death of the brother of the narrator, in Super-Cannes it is the untimely death of a doctor in the development, which leads to his replacement with the wife of the narrator.
Thematically both books lie squarely within what you might call Twin Peaks territory, where everything is not what it seems under a placid surface. Perhaps a better comparison is Blue Velvet. Both Cocaine Nights and Super-Cannes make for fun reading, plenty of sex, violence, drugs and death, but also enough depth to make you reflect, even if Ballard's ideas have largely been co-opted by a generation of pop culture content creators, it still seems fresh enough to engage a reader.
by J.G. Ballard
Make no mistake about it, J.G. Ballard is one of my favorite contemporary authors. Mostly because he's one of the 20th century authors who pioneered the concept of speculative fiction as literary fiction, escaping the confines of genre and emerging as a serious writer with serious ideas, but also someone who enjoys dsytopias and sci fi. This is one of my favorite themes of 20th century fiction, the elevation of non serious fiction into serious literature, how it happens, why it happens, the consequences of it happening.
Super-Cannes is often called a companion piece to his 1996 novel, , both set in hyper-modern developments in south-western Europe. In Cocaine Nights, the development is a "leisure world" for retired and semi-retired expatriates, living on the coast of Spain. In Super-Cannes, the development is a combination business park and residence for multi-national corporations. Both books cover the same territory: An outside is drawn to the community by accident, in Cocaine Nights it is the untimely death of the brother of the narrator, in Super-Cannes it is the untimely death of a doctor in the development, which leads to his replacement with the wife of the narrator.
Thematically both books lie squarely within what you might call Twin Peaks territory, where everything is not what it seems under a placid surface. Perhaps a better comparison is Blue Velvet. Both Cocaine Nights and Super-Cannes make for fun reading, plenty of sex, violence, drugs and death, but also enough depth to make you reflect, even if Ballard's ideas have largely been co-opted by a generation of pop culture content creators, it still seems fresh enough to engage a reader.
Originally posted 2/7/18
The Blind Assassin (2000)
by Margaret Atwood
The path to literary greatness takes many twists and turns. The major milestones I've seen repeated in the 20th century are:
1. The break through debut novel.
2. The major prize winning novel.
3. The blockbuster movie or television version of a novel.
4. The best-seller.
I think an easy, fair and accurate way to evaluate canon eligibility is to hand out points for each of those four, maybe add a fifth for "public celebrity status" and then just see where you are at with each author. I think you'd have to adjust the value of each best seller downward to account for authors who have nothing but best sellers- there is a whole shelf full of "airport thriller/mystery" type authors who have dozens of best-sellers, a couple good movies and no prizes.
If you look at a writer like Margaret Atwood, who is currently sitting in third place in the odds table for next years Nobel Prize in Literature, you can see the path to canonical status in action. Specifically, in the past year she had her first blockbuster television version, the award wining The Handmaiden's Tale. The Blind Assassin was another major achievement, it won the Booker Prize in 2000. As a Canadian, Atwood is ineligible for the United States based Pulitzer and National Book Award- and you'd have to think that given her eligibility she would have won, see Annie Proulx, who won a Pulitzer and a National Book Award for The Shipping News, which basically takes place in Canada.
I haven't gone back and looked at the contemporaneous coverage of the Prize, but it looks like it was a weak year- with a minor Ishiguro book and a bunch of titles I don't even recognize. The Blind Assassin wasn't particularly well received by United States critics- the New York Times straight out panned it, and I would imagine the Booker really gave The Blind Assassin a sales boost stateside.
As for the substance of The Blind Assassin, it's a work of historical fiction, set in the same Southern Ontario landscape that figures prominently in many of Atwood's books. Iris Chase, the protagonist and narrator, discusses her past, with an emphasis on the relationship between Iris and Laura, her deceased sister. She also throws in a sci-fi twist, with a fantasy story-within-a-story whose authorship is a major element of the larger story. I read it respectfully, but I have to say that I agree with early critics, who found it sloppily written and over-long. 550 pages!
But hey, if Atwood wins the Nobel Prize in Literature, this will be one of her canonical works.
Published 2/7/18
Ignorance (2000)
by Milan Kundera
Ignorance is the fourth Kundera title on the original 1001 Books list, the first since The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984) and it gives Kundera one book in every decade except the 1990's. The other two are The Joke (1967) and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (1979). Similar to his other books, Ignorance deals with the impact of Communism on the residents of the Czech Republic (then Czechslovakia) and the various decisions people made. Here, the narrator is a female emigre, returning for the first time after the fall of Communism, where she hooks up with an old flame after a random encounter. The punchline is that her partner doesn't remember who she is. I mean, it's not a punchline, like all Kundera novels, the plot takes a back seat to the solo philosophizing of your typical Kundera protagonist.
I would say Kundera is over-represented on the first list. I would give him two books, The Joke and The Unbearable Lightness of Being and cut the other two. How much European existentialism do we need? Just watch The Wings of Desire by Wim Wenders and you've pretty much got it.
Published 2/11/18
City of God (2000)
by E.L. Doctorow
I guess E.L. Doctorow is still canon, even though I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone outside a graduate course in American literature who might be enthusiastic about his inclusion. He's got the genuine, late twentieth century break out book, The Book of Daniel, he has two mid/late career multi-dimensional culture properties, Billy Bathgate and Ragtime. City of God, then is Doctorow's fourth best novel, and probably the one you would have to cut from the next version.
If you were looking for a periodization of American literature between, say, 1980 and 2020, a natural dividing line is the events of September 11th, 2001. For a couple of reasons- first, it's within a couple of years of the twenty year generation line between 1980 and 2000, second, New York City is so dramatically over represented in American literary fiction that the fact that 9/11 took place in New York City magnifies the significance of that particular event.
City of God, which is more or less a "New York City" novel of the pre 9/11 era- almost the last, I'm thinking, joins a shelf whose most prominent representative is Paul Auster, American writers influenced by the existentialist influenced European tradition of post- World War II fiction. Doctorow maintains experimental flourishes without alienating the reader, he confuses the reader, but no in a way that distracts you from the emotions of his character.
But, I think , the major division is that pre 9/11 fiction is set in a world where evil, more or less, doesn't exist. If evil does exist it is the evil of the increasingly distant past, i.e. the Holocaust, which provides the dramatic element for Doctorow's thin plot.
I think maybe City of God made the 1001 Book List because it is "late" Doctorow and there is a spiritual theme that is mostly absent from his sprawling Americana epics. To his credit, he pulls it together at the end. I'm just left wondering who is reading Doctorow in 2018.
Published 2/13/18
Spring Flowers, Spring Frost (2002)
by Ismail Kadare
Ismail Kadare is Albania's contribution to the world literary canon, one of a small group of Balkan-area novelists to penetrate the English language market for literary fiction. Most of Kadare's books were originally written in Albanian, and simultaneously published in Albanian and French, and the English language push has come via translations of the French editions.
Mark Gurabardhi is the protagonist- a young artist living in post-Communist Albania. He has an up and down relationship with his artist model, she is vexed by her familial entanglement in the revival of the medieval "blood laws" AKA "the kanun" of Albania. Kadare alternates the main narrative with chapters that are more allegorical in nature, including the "real" story of a young woman forced to marry a snake.
It's all very European turn-of-the-21st century-literary fiction, ennui/mild depression, under employment, rootlessness and a loss of purpose, you know, European literary fiction. The Albanian locale isn't quite as distinctive as it was in his books written prior to the collapse of Communism, now his Albania reads like Eastern Europe with blood feuds. I'm writing as a fan of Albania from way back, and I acknowledge that Kadare is extremely prolific. I wonder if this is the book to include in the 1001 Books project alongside Broken April (1978).
Published 2/13/18
Pastoralia (2000)
by George Saunders
Pastoralia is a collection of short stories from Booker Prize winning novelist George Saunders. Now that the question of "but can he write a novel?" has been definitely answered in the affirmative, short story collections like Pastoralia no longer have to shoulder the burden of Saunders reputation. The title story, about a man living inside a "human zoo" is the clear stand out, the other stories traverse similar thematic territory- humans disconnected and alienated from their surroundings, often carrying on internal monologues that ignore the outside world.
Published 2/14/18
An Obedient Father (2000)
Akhil Sharma
Speaking of Indian-themed novels from the end of the 20th century. Another debut novel, no less. Like Arundhati Roy, Sharma waited over a decade to write another book, Family Life, published in 2014. You really risk...losing your audience...when you wait more than five years between putting out works like books, movies or albums that seek to balance serious and popular art. Obviously for pure pop the audience attention span is shorter- the idea of a work a year has historically been considered optimum, although now a multi-market promotional cycle including publication and some kind of supporting touring appearances can run two or three years The cycle takes different shapes for different art forms.
Of course, the financial consequences of a "hit" in any of these cycles lasts far longer than the promotional cycle itself. It can be decades, a lifetime of income. I'm not saying that is the case here, Sharma. Having a "hit" in the literary fiction world is something like getting Best New Music in Pitchfork: You can parlay it into big money, but by itself it's not worth a lifetime of financial security.
An Obedient Father is most notable for its depiction of the most memorable villain in Indian literary fiction, Ram Karan, a widower and "bag man" for a local Congress Party functionary. The corruption in his job is mirrored by corruption in his private life, notably an incestuous dalliance with his now adult daughter, Anita, who is herself widowed and living in Karan's tiny flat with her own daughter, Asha.
The events take place against the backdrop of the assassination of Rajiv Ghandi, the last representative of the Congress Party dynasty. His death was a crucial turning point in the rise of the rightist Hindu fundamentalist party BJP. This rise is mirrored in the plot of An Obedient Father, as Karan's mentor is induced to betray the Congress Party and run for office as a representative of the BJP. Karan tries to navigate the rapids of politics while the consequences of his behavior with Anita, graphically depicted in the text of the book, come home to roost after twenty years of denial.
The 1990's were a break out for Indian literature in the West, as well as the literature of South Asia. Sharma is at the tail end of the initial post-Rushdie explosion, but he also represents an evolution, with a level of graphic detail absent from earlier books. Sharma's India stinks, metaphorically and actually, and it is hard not to be repelled by this world. Call it progress.
Published 2/18/18
The Human Stain (2000)
by Philip Roth
The most amazing aspect of Philip Roth's career, aside from the fact of his never winning the Nobel Prize in Literature, is his late period productivity. Within the first edition of the 1001 Books list, he is represented by Portnoy's Complaint (1969), his breakthrough. From 1972 the editors decided to include The Breast. Then, bam, it's the 1990's, and Roth has Operation Shylock (1993), Sabbath's Theatre (1995), American Pastoral (1997), this book and The Plot Against America (2004). He lost four of those titles in the first revision. It makes sense in that almost every author who is represented by four or more titles in the first list loses half of those en route to the second, no doubt to allow more diverse voices into the canon making exercise. Replacing four Philip Roth novels between editions makes sense, the first list represents a kind of "before," and then subsequent revisions represent reactions to that first list.
The Human Stain, along Portnoy's Complaint are his two books that are considered "core" i.e. never removed, titles from the whole run of 1001 Books revisions. That would make The Human Stain Roth's best book, since Portnoy's Complaint is his first. "Best and First" might be a maxim for would-be canon creators seeking to eliminate multiple works from the same creator. The Human Stain is a "Nathan Zuckerman" novel, as is American Pastoral. Nathan Zuckerman is the main narrator in this series of Roth books, a Roth-esque- though not actually "Philip Roth"- that's a different set of Philip Roth novels, represented in the first edition of the 1001 Books list with Operation Shylock.
Zuckerman, in both The Human Stain and American Pastoral is a succesful writer living in semi-retirement in rural New York, in the vicinity of a small liberal arts college. He is single, no children, impotent and incontinent as the result of prostate cancer surgery. In the Nathan Zuckerman novel he relates the stories of people he encounters. In The Human Stain that person is Coleman Silk, the long-time Professor and Dean of nearby Athena College, recently retired in the aftermath of a "only in the 90's" struggle over Silk's use of the word "spook" to describe two perpetually absent African American students.
His disgrace is followed shortly by the death of his much beloved wife. Silk takes up with a local woman, an illiterate former run away who works at his former school as a janitor. This relationship causes an uproar in the small community. Silk, meanwhile is concealing a life time secret, and one known to any reader who knows anything of this book- he is black, born black, and has lived his life as a white man.
More apparent in The Human Strain than in American Pastoral is the extraordinarily sophisticated use of Nathan Zuckerman as both a major character, narrator and WRITER of the text presented to the reader. This last bit allows the insertion of entire chapters written from the perspective of characters besides Zuckerman- giving The Human Stain incredible depth, while also maintaining the strong narrative voice of Zuckerman himself. Thus, Silk's secret- that he is African-American passing for white, is revealed first in a chapter from the final book written by Zuckerman about the events of The Human Stain- written from the perspective of Silk itself. Later, close to the end of the book, Zuckerman the character hears from Silk's sister the narrative that allows him to write the earlier portion of the book from the perspective of Silk himself.
The Human Stain also seems to be a kind of commentary on the career of Roth himself, by Roth, through Zuckerman. It's hard not to compare the kind of politically correct insanity that results in a professor being persecuted for using the term "spook" in class seems linked to the the failure of the Nobel Prize committee to recognize Roth's achievement.
Or, you know, maybe not. I'm sure Roth himself would laugh at that last observation.
Published 2/21/18
The Heart of Redness (2000)
by Zakes Mda
Zakes Mda is the kind of author I had in mind when I started reading all 1001 Books from the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die list. He is South African. I'd go so far as to say that he is little known inside the United States, with a higher profile in the UK. He's won some awards in the UK, particularly for this very book, which is about the amaXhosa people of South Africa and their past and present. Mda's narrative switches between the awakening of Camagu, a Westernized amaXhosa who has recently returned from 30 years of life in the United States to find his way in post-liberation South Africa.
Disappointments in the city related to his status as a returnee ("Where were you when we danced the freedom dance?" is the line that Camagu uses as short-hand fr his failure to land a job) lead him to the township of Qolorha-by-Sea, the point of origin for the Nongqawuse movement- a milenarian cult that led to the slaughter of large amounts of cattle by the amaXhosa in preparation for the imminent arrival of an earthly paradise. Camagu arrives in the late 20th century to find the people still split between "Believers" and "Unbelievers."
This disagreements are pushed to the fore when investors from Johannesburg arrive with plans to turn the unspoiled coast into a casino-resort. Meanwhile, Camagu finds love with Qukeswa, daughter of the leader of the Believers (those who still hold with the prophetess from the 19th century). Prominent in the local community is Dalton, the son of an English military officer, who speaks the local language better than many locals.
While Mda's prose style can be clunky, there is no missing the sophistication of his portrayal of this familiar debate of the development of special natural places. He links past to present in unpredictable ways and he avoids all of the prat-falls that accompany a century of white western Europeans writing about what dark-skinned people think.
Published 2/22/18
by Paulo Coelho
Brazilian author Paulo Coelho has an astonishing 30 million fans on Facebook. That is pretty insane, considering that there are many recent Nobel Prize winning level authors who don't even have 10,000. With Coelho, any claim to canonical status starts with his extraordinarily large reading audience, rather than any kind of critical acclaim. The Alchemist is his best known book, much beloved by the type of people who hang "Live/Laugh/Love" type signs above their beds and place credence in astrology. In the mid 1990's, The Alchemist secured his international audience, but he's done nothing to disappoint since then, churning out a new book every couple of years.
I've consciously avoided reading any Paulo Coelho books before now. I've consciously avoided talking to people who read Paulo Coelho books, to the extent that I'm able. The Devil and Miss Prym, about a wealthy stranger who shows up in a remote Italian(?) village with a chilling proposition: If one person in the isolated village is murdered in the next three days, the village will receive ten gold bars, buried nearby. The visitor selects Miss Prym, an outsider working at the village inn, to convey the message to the village.
The Devil and Miss Prym was published in 1992, two years before the 1994 break out year for The Alchemist, which was itself published first in 1988. The US publication of the English translation arrived in 2000, a clear result of the success of The Alchemist in 1994- publishers go back and find earlier books that haven't been released in the United States, then release them in the US as if they are new works.
The whole book seemed ridiculous and I thought Coelho's non-specific internationalism was vague and dissatisfying in the same way a Hollywood movie can be vague and dissatisfying when it comes to portraying place.
Published 2/22/18
How the Dead Live (2000)
by Will Self
Crazy story about How the Dead Live- I checked out a free Ebook version from the Los Angeles Public Library and opened it in the Kindle app on my Samsung Galaxy phone. It had a button to buy the unabridged audio version, over 15 hours long, for forty dollars, and reader, do you know I accidentally bought it? I tried to undo the transaction but was thwarted, then I thought, well, for 15 fucking hours of audio book, why not?
The, "Why not?" would be, "Why not? Because this is 15 hours about death, death, and dying. Lily Bloom, the narrator of How the Dead Live, is already dead, she is what the Tibetans would call the Bardo- the spiritual half way house between death and the release from the wheel of consciousness. It's hard not to think about the 2017 Booker Prize winner, Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders, which explicitly utilized the Tibetan Bardo concept.
In How the Dead Live, Self doesn't make his after-death life specific to a denomination, though it becomes clear to everyone BUT Lily Bloom that the idea of after-death is to release your self and free yourself from the cycle of existence. Bloom , suddenly dead at 65 after a lightning fast battle with breast cancer, is obsessed with her two daughters, particularly Natasha, a beautiful but broken junkie- and by junkie I mean heroin addict who shoots heroin, and her other less interesting daughter, married to the succesful owner of a chain of stationery shops.
It's hard not to read some Joycean aspirations into the last name of the main character. Anyone even vaguely familiar with Ulysses will see that book echoed in How the Dead Live. I wouldn't be the first person to observe that Self can be more witty than deep. How the Dead Live, with it's dark, dark, subject matter is hardly breezy fun but it is fun of a sort. I thought, going in, that 15 hours by one reader would be tough- but the reader of the audio book version was obviously a trained voice actress and she did different accents- the American accent of Lily Bloom, the English accents of her daughter, even the accent of Lily's aboriginal spirit guide.
Published 2/24/18
London and the South-East (2008)How the Dead Live (2000)
by Will Self
Crazy story about How the Dead Live- I checked out a free Ebook version from the Los Angeles Public Library and opened it in the Kindle app on my Samsung Galaxy phone. It had a button to buy the unabridged audio version, over 15 hours long, for forty dollars, and reader, do you know I accidentally bought it? I tried to undo the transaction but was thwarted, then I thought, well, for 15 fucking hours of audio book, why not?
The, "Why not?" would be, "Why not? Because this is 15 hours about death, death, and dying. Lily Bloom, the narrator of How the Dead Live, is already dead, she is what the Tibetans would call the Bardo- the spiritual half way house between death and the release from the wheel of consciousness. It's hard not to think about the 2017 Booker Prize winner, Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders, which explicitly utilized the Tibetan Bardo concept.
In How the Dead Live, Self doesn't make his after-death life specific to a denomination, though it becomes clear to everyone BUT Lily Bloom that the idea of after-death is to release your self and free yourself from the cycle of existence. Bloom , suddenly dead at 65 after a lightning fast battle with breast cancer, is obsessed with her two daughters, particularly Natasha, a beautiful but broken junkie- and by junkie I mean heroin addict who shoots heroin, and her other less interesting daughter, married to the succesful owner of a chain of stationery shops.
It's hard not to read some Joycean aspirations into the last name of the main character. Anyone even vaguely familiar with Ulysses will see that book echoed in How the Dead Live. I wouldn't be the first person to observe that Self can be more witty than deep. How the Dead Live, with it's dark, dark, subject matter is hardly breezy fun but it is fun of a sort. I thought, going in, that 15 hours by one reader would be tough- but the reader of the audio book version was obviously a trained voice actress and she did different accents- the American accent of Lily Bloom, the English accents of her daughter, even the accent of Lily's aboriginal spirit guide.
Published 2/24/18
by David Szalay
David Szalay had a break-out book in 2016, All That Man Is: A Novel, which made it to the 2016 Booker Prize Short-list. Cue the American re-issues of his earlier books which didn't get an American publisher when they were originally released.
London and the South-East is Szalay's first novel, published in 2008, finally published in the United States in October of last year. All That Man Is: A Novel, drew attention for it's experimental technique, with some critics going so far as to say it wasn't, in fact, a novel. London and the South-East, on the other hand, is very much a novel, a bildungsroman of a sort, set among the world of sales men specializing in selling ad space in trade magazines to international corporations. Szalay tips his thematic hand early on, when the narrator Paul Rainey, described as a "hapless anti-hero," makes a lengthy series of observations about the movie version of Glengarry Glen Ross and makes it clear that all the sales-men he runs with, a grotty bunch, as they might say in England, are equally influenced by the "example" of Glengarry Glen Ross.
You might accurately observe that London and the South-East is best summarized as "Glengarry Glen Ross meets the Office (UK version." Szalay, English though he may be, doesn't write in a recognizably English fashion, in the sense that he is not trying to portray a specific socio-economic-ehtnic group. Paul Rainey is recognizably English, but he is relatable to a potential American audience. I mean he doesn't have a drivers license, but still.
GrayWolf Press, his publisher, is a non-profit, so he is outside the orbit of the big three (big two?) of American publishing, but at least he's here. Maybe his next book will get a "major label" release in the US.
Published 2/25/18
The Feast of the Goat (2000)
by Mario Vargas Llosa
Mario Vargas Llosa's Nobel Prize in Literature win in 2010 was a big one. Llosa's international profile before the Nobel win was obviously confirmed by the win, but the win secured his reputation as first among the many Latin American writers of the so-called "Latin American Boom." It places him as the direct successor to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Nobel Prize in Literature winner in 1982. Llosa's career is not identified with a single literary movement in the way that Gabriel Garcia Marquez is synonymous with Magical Realism. Before the Nobel win, that probably hampered the degree to which English language audiences were willing to embrace him.
The Feast of the Goat is based on the life and times of Dominican Republic "caudillo" Rafael Trujillo. In English, he'd be known as a dictator, assassinated in 1961, but not before he spent 30 years directing the government of the Dominican Republic with an iron, fiercely anti-communist fist. Trained by American Marines in the Dominican Republic to establish a national army, he rose to power in early 1930, ending a period of endemic low-level civil war. His signature move in his early career was the parsley massacre of 1937, where Trujilo's national army murdered an indeterminate number of Haitian "illegal immigrants"- variously estimated at between five and twenty thousand.
Support for Trujillo was always strong in the United States. During the height of the Cold War he was like a counter-balance for Castro, and the Dominican Republic had the largest economy in the area. By the late 1950's and early 1960's, the Cold War was cooling off, and Trujillo was being castigated by the Catholic Church for his admittedly grotesque human rights abuses.
Llosa approaches this story from three different angles: The return of the daughter of a disgraced (but still living Trujillo cabinet member known as "the egghead," the narrative of the dictator himself nearing senescence and the multi-perspective narrative of the assassins who kill the Dictator in 1961 and what came immediately after, told from several perspectives. The Feast of the Goat is impressive technically, and is also interesting in terms of the story of Trujillo, a true 20th century military-political monster- not quite Hitler/Mao/Stalin level but impressive for his day and time, and also closely linked to the US by his training and politics.
The Feast of the Goat (2000)
by Mario Vargas Llosa
Mario Vargas Llosa's Nobel Prize in Literature win in 2010 was a big one. Llosa's international profile before the Nobel win was obviously confirmed by the win, but the win secured his reputation as first among the many Latin American writers of the so-called "Latin American Boom." It places him as the direct successor to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Nobel Prize in Literature winner in 1982. Llosa's career is not identified with a single literary movement in the way that Gabriel Garcia Marquez is synonymous with Magical Realism. Before the Nobel win, that probably hampered the degree to which English language audiences were willing to embrace him.
The Feast of the Goat is based on the life and times of Dominican Republic "caudillo" Rafael Trujillo. In English, he'd be known as a dictator, assassinated in 1961, but not before he spent 30 years directing the government of the Dominican Republic with an iron, fiercely anti-communist fist. Trained by American Marines in the Dominican Republic to establish a national army, he rose to power in early 1930, ending a period of endemic low-level civil war. His signature move in his early career was the parsley massacre of 1937, where Trujilo's national army murdered an indeterminate number of Haitian "illegal immigrants"- variously estimated at between five and twenty thousand.
Support for Trujillo was always strong in the United States. During the height of the Cold War he was like a counter-balance for Castro, and the Dominican Republic had the largest economy in the area. By the late 1950's and early 1960's, the Cold War was cooling off, and Trujillo was being castigated by the Catholic Church for his admittedly grotesque human rights abuses.
Llosa approaches this story from three different angles: The return of the daughter of a disgraced (but still living Trujillo cabinet member known as "the egghead," the narrative of the dictator himself nearing senescence and the multi-perspective narrative of the assassins who kill the Dictator in 1961 and what came immediately after, told from several perspectives. The Feast of the Goat is impressive technically, and is also interesting in terms of the story of Trujillo, a true 20th century military-political monster- not quite Hitler/Mao/Stalin level but impressive for his day and time, and also closely linked to the US by his training and politics.
Published 2/26/18
The Body Artist (2001)
by Don DeLillo
Simon and Shuster Audio Book
Narrated by Laurie Anderson
I went through a decent period of listening to audio books six, seven years ago, public domain books from the 18th and 19th century, using the Librivox app. It had some benefits- free books for one, but the quality of the reading ranged from ok to fucking terrible- often times it sounds like people were reading to help improve their English. Now, I have finally figured out that you can get audio books and listen to them via the public library system. BOOM.
The Body Artist is a nicely put together audio book- certainly by the sad standards of public domain librivox- the narrator is none other than Laurie Anderson. Clocking in at a little under three hours- The Body Artist is more like a novella than a novel, about the experiences of Lauren Hartke, a 30ish performance artist known as "The Body Artist" dealing with the aftermath of the very sudden suicide of her 60ish film maker husband, Rey Robles. The Body Artist is mostly stream of consciousness narration by Hartke, with brief, third-party interruptions written in print journalism style, about Hartke the artist.
I actually listened to the entire audio book thinking it was by Paul Auster, now learning that it's actually by DeLillo the sparse, minimalist prose style and believable female character does more seem thin something DeLillo would do. Like many of the books the editors of 1001 Books selected from 2000 and after, The Body Artist seems plucked at random because it an interesting book by an established author. I would call it one of his minor works- certainly behind White Noise and Underworld- both of which are unreviewed here because I read them in school, and also I would rate it behind Libra (1988)- his Lee Harvey Oswald book, and Mao II (1991). No doubt DeLillo was over-represented in the first edition of 1001 Books to Read Before You Die.
The Body Artist (2001)
by Don DeLillo
Simon and Shuster Audio Book
Narrated by Laurie Anderson
I went through a decent period of listening to audio books six, seven years ago, public domain books from the 18th and 19th century, using the Librivox app. It had some benefits- free books for one, but the quality of the reading ranged from ok to fucking terrible- often times it sounds like people were reading to help improve their English. Now, I have finally figured out that you can get audio books and listen to them via the public library system. BOOM.
The Body Artist is a nicely put together audio book- certainly by the sad standards of public domain librivox- the narrator is none other than Laurie Anderson. Clocking in at a little under three hours- The Body Artist is more like a novella than a novel, about the experiences of Lauren Hartke, a 30ish performance artist known as "The Body Artist" dealing with the aftermath of the very sudden suicide of her 60ish film maker husband, Rey Robles. The Body Artist is mostly stream of consciousness narration by Hartke, with brief, third-party interruptions written in print journalism style, about Hartke the artist.
I actually listened to the entire audio book thinking it was by Paul Auster, now learning that it's actually by DeLillo the sparse, minimalist prose style and believable female character does more seem thin something DeLillo would do. Like many of the books the editors of 1001 Books selected from 2000 and after, The Body Artist seems plucked at random because it an interesting book by an established author. I would call it one of his minor works- certainly behind White Noise and Underworld- both of which are unreviewed here because I read them in school, and also I would rate it behind Libra (1988)- his Lee Harvey Oswald book, and Mao II (1991). No doubt DeLillo was over-represented in the first edition of 1001 Books to Read Before You Die.
Published 2/28/18
Fury (2001)
by Salman Rushdie
The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999) marks a new phase in Salman Rushdie's career, where he transitioned from a serious literary author to a global media celebrity. The Ground Beneath Her Feet is an alternate universe rock and roll phantasia, largely set in New York City with characters who spend their adult lives as international media celebrities. Two years later, Fury comes out, featuring an older male professor who has invented an international media property based on a doll. It's more complicated than that, but also not really.
Malika Solanka, a Bombay born, Cambridge educated, millionaire-professor-inventor, has decamped to New York city, abandoning his wife and young son in England. A serial killer stalks the streets of New York, praying on young socialites, Solanka takes a vow of celibacy but promptly falls for not one but two "manic pixie dream girls."
Rushdie, by virtue of talent and celebrity, has earned his lifetime audience, but Fury really is not his best work. The "older man rejuvenated by sex with a much younger woman" is tedious beyond belief, particularly after the focus on the abuses of men with power in the entertainment industry. Surely, everything that can possibly be said about this dynamic has been said. Best to just draw a line under the genre with The Human Stain by Philip Roth being the last one through the gate, before the gate is shut. Horny old men, obsessed with sex with young girls and their prostate.
Fury is another 1001 Books selection from the final decade that feels random, merely reflecting the fact that Rushdie put out a book in 2001. Picking in 2004 and 2005, they would only have a vague idea which titles might be canonical and they got it wrong with Fury.
Fury (2001)
by Salman Rushdie
The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999) marks a new phase in Salman Rushdie's career, where he transitioned from a serious literary author to a global media celebrity. The Ground Beneath Her Feet is an alternate universe rock and roll phantasia, largely set in New York City with characters who spend their adult lives as international media celebrities. Two years later, Fury comes out, featuring an older male professor who has invented an international media property based on a doll. It's more complicated than that, but also not really.
Malika Solanka, a Bombay born, Cambridge educated, millionaire-professor-inventor, has decamped to New York city, abandoning his wife and young son in England. A serial killer stalks the streets of New York, praying on young socialites, Solanka takes a vow of celibacy but promptly falls for not one but two "manic pixie dream girls."
Rushdie, by virtue of talent and celebrity, has earned his lifetime audience, but Fury really is not his best work. The "older man rejuvenated by sex with a much younger woman" is tedious beyond belief, particularly after the focus on the abuses of men with power in the entertainment industry. Surely, everything that can possibly be said about this dynamic has been said. Best to just draw a line under the genre with The Human Stain by Philip Roth being the last one through the gate, before the gate is shut. Horny old men, obsessed with sex with young girls and their prostate.
Fury is another 1001 Books selection from the final decade that feels random, merely reflecting the fact that Rushdie put out a book in 2001. Picking in 2004 and 2005, they would only have a vague idea which titles might be canonical and they got it wrong with Fury.
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| Life of Pi (book) was an unexpected hit in 2001. A decade later, the Ang Lee directed film made 600 million world wide. |
Published 2/28/18
Life of Pi (2001)
by Yann Martel
Life of Pie was THE left-field break out hit in the field of literary fiction, originally published by Knopf Canada (Martel is Canadian) and going on to sell over 10 million copies world wide. It also won the Booker Prize in 2002 making Life of Pie a rare concurrent popular and critical hit at the time it was originally published. The success of the book was mirrored by the success of the movie, a 120 million dollar budgeted, Ang Lee directed spectacle that was probably the first and only Booker Prize winning novel to have a movie that was screened in IMAX 3D. Life of Pi, the movie, grossed 600 million world wide, 80 percent of that amount outside of the United States. Truly, Life of Pi is a perfect example of the modern phenomenon of the "international best-seller" with all the bells and whistles.
I've personally been avoiding everything to do with the Life of Pi for no good reason than it's popularity. I instinctively distrust best-sellers, and I wasn't even aware of the Booker Prize win until I finished listening to the 12 hour audio book version I checked out from the Los Angeles Public Library using their excellent Overdrive app. An app, I might also mention, which allows you to listen at anywhere from .6 to two times the speed of the narration. Being able to speed up an 11 hour audio book is crucial, particularly when hours of it feature a young Indian boy alone on a raft in the middle of the Pacific, with only a tiger for company.
I would be honestly embarrassed to read a book version of Life of Pi at this point, so the audiobook was a god send. Speeding it up using the Overdrive app made it a pain free experience, and Life of Pi certainly has it's moments. Life of Pi is something like a Robinson Crusoe tale. Press materials play up the fantastical elements, but that fantasy only goes about as far as Jule Verne or H.G. Wells- no wizards, fairies or interplanetary travel, just a kid on a raft with a tiger.
There is also a healthy introduction detailing Pi's childhood in the former French colonial city in India, Pondicherry, where Pi's dad owns a Zoo. I found myself wondering, four or five hours in, when he was going to actually get onto the raft with the Tiger. Once it happened, however, I could see where Martel won over both critics and fans. "Serious fiction with a heart and a sense of wonder!" I can almost hear readers exclaiming.
I can also understand why the Wikipedia page leads with the fact that several publishers passed on the chance to publish Life of Pi before Knopf Canada picked it up. If you got the elevator pitch for Life of Pi you might snort in disbelief. Especially when you heard that the writer was Canadian and not Indian. But it all works, Pi, the character is just charming as hell, and Martel has done such a good job with his research, and has such a thorough understanding of his prospective audience, that I could only shake my head in wonder when I got to the end- of the audio book- I still wouldn't be caught dead with the book in my hands.
Life of Pi (2001)
by Yann Martel
Life of Pie was THE left-field break out hit in the field of literary fiction, originally published by Knopf Canada (Martel is Canadian) and going on to sell over 10 million copies world wide. It also won the Booker Prize in 2002 making Life of Pie a rare concurrent popular and critical hit at the time it was originally published. The success of the book was mirrored by the success of the movie, a 120 million dollar budgeted, Ang Lee directed spectacle that was probably the first and only Booker Prize winning novel to have a movie that was screened in IMAX 3D. Life of Pi, the movie, grossed 600 million world wide, 80 percent of that amount outside of the United States. Truly, Life of Pi is a perfect example of the modern phenomenon of the "international best-seller" with all the bells and whistles.
I've personally been avoiding everything to do with the Life of Pi for no good reason than it's popularity. I instinctively distrust best-sellers, and I wasn't even aware of the Booker Prize win until I finished listening to the 12 hour audio book version I checked out from the Los Angeles Public Library using their excellent Overdrive app. An app, I might also mention, which allows you to listen at anywhere from .6 to two times the speed of the narration. Being able to speed up an 11 hour audio book is crucial, particularly when hours of it feature a young Indian boy alone on a raft in the middle of the Pacific, with only a tiger for company.
I would be honestly embarrassed to read a book version of Life of Pi at this point, so the audiobook was a god send. Speeding it up using the Overdrive app made it a pain free experience, and Life of Pi certainly has it's moments. Life of Pi is something like a Robinson Crusoe tale. Press materials play up the fantastical elements, but that fantasy only goes about as far as Jule Verne or H.G. Wells- no wizards, fairies or interplanetary travel, just a kid on a raft with a tiger.
There is also a healthy introduction detailing Pi's childhood in the former French colonial city in India, Pondicherry, where Pi's dad owns a Zoo. I found myself wondering, four or five hours in, when he was going to actually get onto the raft with the Tiger. Once it happened, however, I could see where Martel won over both critics and fans. "Serious fiction with a heart and a sense of wonder!" I can almost hear readers exclaiming.
I can also understand why the Wikipedia page leads with the fact that several publishers passed on the chance to publish Life of Pi before Knopf Canada picked it up. If you got the elevator pitch for Life of Pi you might snort in disbelief. Especially when you heard that the writer was Canadian and not Indian. But it all works, Pi, the character is just charming as hell, and Martel has done such a good job with his research, and has such a thorough understanding of his prospective audience, that I could only shake my head in wonder when I got to the end- of the audio book- I still wouldn't be caught dead with the book in my hands.
Published 3/1/18
Choke (2001)
by Chuck Palahniuk
Looks like I'm going to come up about 150 short on first pass through the 2006 edition of 1001 Books to Read Before You Die. Some of those are the pre 18th century section books- I just skipped those in the beginning. The rest are books that I skipped, mostly because they were multi-volume with all the volumes indicated, or too long, or foreign, or all of those. The other major category of the skips are books I've already read, particularly from about 1960 onward. Actually, the already read category is likely the biggest of the 150 or so title that will remain after I've done the first pass.
I'm not a big re-reader but, that too, is something I want to address by completing this project. I'm not sure I should have left all these books for the end, but there you go. Choke I read...in college? After Fight Club the movie (1999) came out. I never actually read Fight Club, and I didn't like Choke when I read it in college. Fact is, I don't like Chuck Palahniuk, and like Paulo Coehlo readers, I'm pretty sure I don't like his fans, either. Choke, with its themes of sexual addiction and mental illness, unsympathetically addressed, has not aged well.
Perhaps you can call him a prophet of the Trump era to come- only a decade or so in advance of the trends that congealed in his election. To me, there is a clear, direct, line between Choke and the election of Trump as President. That's not a reason in and of itself to dislike Palahniuk or Choke, but you add that to the fact that I didn't like this book when it came out, it's enough. Fuck this guy.
Choke (2001)
by Chuck Palahniuk
Looks like I'm going to come up about 150 short on first pass through the 2006 edition of 1001 Books to Read Before You Die. Some of those are the pre 18th century section books- I just skipped those in the beginning. The rest are books that I skipped, mostly because they were multi-volume with all the volumes indicated, or too long, or foreign, or all of those. The other major category of the skips are books I've already read, particularly from about 1960 onward. Actually, the already read category is likely the biggest of the 150 or so title that will remain after I've done the first pass.
I'm not a big re-reader but, that too, is something I want to address by completing this project. I'm not sure I should have left all these books for the end, but there you go. Choke I read...in college? After Fight Club the movie (1999) came out. I never actually read Fight Club, and I didn't like Choke when I read it in college. Fact is, I don't like Chuck Palahniuk, and like Paulo Coehlo readers, I'm pretty sure I don't like his fans, either. Choke, with its themes of sexual addiction and mental illness, unsympathetically addressed, has not aged well.
Perhaps you can call him a prophet of the Trump era to come- only a decade or so in advance of the trends that congealed in his election. To me, there is a clear, direct, line between Choke and the election of Trump as President. That's not a reason in and of itself to dislike Palahniuk or Choke, but you add that to the fact that I didn't like this book when it came out, it's enough. Fuck this guy.
Published 3/4/18
Gabriel's Gift: A Novel (2001)
by Hanif Kureshi
Like his other novels, Gabriel's Gift tracks the life and times of struggling "creative class" types living in present day London. The major difference between Gabriel's Gift and other Kureshi titles is, as the Wikipedia page informs, white protagonists (instead of South Asian protagonists like his other books.) I read Gabriel's Gift using the Kindle App on my Samsung Galaxy- after checking the Kindle Ebook out from the Los Angeles Public Library. Gabriel's Gift is an ideal length- 220 pages in the paperback version; for reading as a Kindle Ebook.
The fact that Kureshi announces that Gabriel's Gift is, in fact, a novel, is questionable. You could call it a novella. Unless you are particularly fond of English working class/struggling class fiction, there isn't much here. Kureshi has a deft touch with his characters, but they all read the same- three title in to his work, and all of his protagonists seem alike to me.
Gabriel's Gift: A Novel (2001)
by Hanif Kureshi
Like his other novels, Gabriel's Gift tracks the life and times of struggling "creative class" types living in present day London. The major difference between Gabriel's Gift and other Kureshi titles is, as the Wikipedia page informs, white protagonists (instead of South Asian protagonists like his other books.) I read Gabriel's Gift using the Kindle App on my Samsung Galaxy- after checking the Kindle Ebook out from the Los Angeles Public Library. Gabriel's Gift is an ideal length- 220 pages in the paperback version; for reading as a Kindle Ebook.
The fact that Kureshi announces that Gabriel's Gift is, in fact, a novel, is questionable. You could call it a novella. Unless you are particularly fond of English working class/struggling class fiction, there isn't much here. Kureshi has a deft touch with his characters, but they all read the same- three title in to his work, and all of his protagonists seem alike to me.
Published 3/8/18
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (2003)
by Mark Haddon
The description of "international best-seller" dominates the 1001 Books selections between 2000 and 2006. Whether this reflects a particular strength of that form of novel just before publication OR whether it reflects a lack of familiarity with lesser known titles published more recently OR both, it is a prominent feature.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time is sold as a mystery story with an autistic narrator, and that is accurate. Christopher Boone is the narrator, a so-called "savant" with behavioral problems and very solid math skills. He's in a "special" school, but is planning to take his "A" levels, in Math, a prerequisite for university admission in England, where The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time is set.
The "curious incident" of the title is the murder of his neighbor's dog, setting Christopher off into a voyage of self-discovery. Haddon handles the issues of raising an autistic child with real compassion and depth of insight. Autism places severe stress on the relationships of parents, separation and divorce are common, even often. I'm pretty sure that even today you can buy a paperback copy of this book in any English language airport in the western world. When is the movie version coming out? I guess, the play- which ran in the recent past, would be a precursor to a film, which would be a version of the play rather than a version of the book.
Published 3/4/18
after the quake (2002)The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (2003)
by Mark Haddon
The description of "international best-seller" dominates the 1001 Books selections between 2000 and 2006. Whether this reflects a particular strength of that form of novel just before publication OR whether it reflects a lack of familiarity with lesser known titles published more recently OR both, it is a prominent feature.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time is sold as a mystery story with an autistic narrator, and that is accurate. Christopher Boone is the narrator, a so-called "savant" with behavioral problems and very solid math skills. He's in a "special" school, but is planning to take his "A" levels, in Math, a prerequisite for university admission in England, where The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time is set.
The "curious incident" of the title is the murder of his neighbor's dog, setting Christopher off into a voyage of self-discovery. Haddon handles the issues of raising an autistic child with real compassion and depth of insight. Autism places severe stress on the relationships of parents, separation and divorce are common, even often. I'm pretty sure that even today you can buy a paperback copy of this book in any English language airport in the western world. When is the movie version coming out? I guess, the play- which ran in the recent past, would be a precursor to a film, which would be a version of the play rather than a version of the book.
Published 3/4/18
by Haruki Murakami
I'm not sure why short stories are so dramatically underrepresented in 1001 Books to Read Before You Die. They left Anton Chekov off the list entirely. There are a few short story collections between 1980 and the publication date of 2006, almost none before that point. I do like Haruki Marakami. It is quite a feat for a novelist/writer to make deep inroads in American literary fiction in translation, and that is exactly what Murakami has done, with a shelf of books that are still in print and often available for purchase at local independent book stores.
Even as a fan, after the quake, a collection of previously published short stories that are loosely thematically bound by the 1995 Kobe earthquake. It is true that the characters and themes resemble those of his earlier books. That predictability is an important asset when it comes to developing and maintaining an audience that purchases the work and grows over time. It's true whether someone is writing literary fiction, romance novels or making films. It's also true that predictability and repetition is often disdained by the aesthetic ideology of contemporary artists. This disdain is rooted in the adoption by artists of an aesthetic ideology that flows directly from 18th and 19th century Romanticism.
after the quake represents a shift for Murakami in matters of style- all stories are narrated from the third person, abandoning the first person narrative common to his previous books. You could say that the whimsy and affectation has been toned down, and that Murakami has embraced a more conventional style. You could argue that this shift isn't the best move for Murakami. His appeal for American readers is linked directly to the whimsy and fantastical plot devices of his earlier books. On the other hand, after the quake was published well after he became a "made man" in English translation, so the risk of some kind of career ending error is non existent.
Published 3/9/18
Nineteen Seventy-Seven (2000)
by David Peace
Nineteen Seventy-Seven is the second of four books in the Red Riding Quartet, about the Yorkshire Ripper murders, written by English author David Peace. I'm not much for crime procedurals, being a criminal defense attorney. I'm not one of those defense attorneys that holds law enforcement in contempt, but I've been around long enough to know that the idea of the super-hero police detective catching an active serial killer is a fantasy, and given the fact that this is a set of four books about a single killer, David Peace understands that as well.
Since there is no ending in the sense of catching a villain and obtaining an explanation, Nineteen Seventy-Seven is about the personal lives of the investigators, and a journalist covering the murders for the local paper. The two main players are both engaged in protracted affairs with prostitutes, the victim of the Ripper. There is nothing simplistic about the way Peace handles these troubled male characters, but at the same time, it certainly can be wearisome to read a work of literary crime fiction with a deeply troubled middle aged, married detective, cheating on his spouse with children at home. The only other type of major player in detective fiction is the detective with no home life and all, whether through an off-stage death, a crippling character flaw or an inappropriate choice of mate.
Both the sex and violence in Nineteen Seventy-Seven is explicit but not particularly shocking for anyone who has seen a single serial killer film.
Nineteen Seventy-Seven (2000)
by David Peace
Nineteen Seventy-Seven is the second of four books in the Red Riding Quartet, about the Yorkshire Ripper murders, written by English author David Peace. I'm not much for crime procedurals, being a criminal defense attorney. I'm not one of those defense attorneys that holds law enforcement in contempt, but I've been around long enough to know that the idea of the super-hero police detective catching an active serial killer is a fantasy, and given the fact that this is a set of four books about a single killer, David Peace understands that as well.
Since there is no ending in the sense of catching a villain and obtaining an explanation, Nineteen Seventy-Seven is about the personal lives of the investigators, and a journalist covering the murders for the local paper. The two main players are both engaged in protracted affairs with prostitutes, the victim of the Ripper. There is nothing simplistic about the way Peace handles these troubled male characters, but at the same time, it certainly can be wearisome to read a work of literary crime fiction with a deeply troubled middle aged, married detective, cheating on his spouse with children at home. The only other type of major player in detective fiction is the detective with no home life and all, whether through an off-stage death, a crippling character flaw or an inappropriate choice of mate.
Both the sex and violence in Nineteen Seventy-Seven is explicit but not particularly shocking for anyone who has seen a single serial killer film.
| S |
Atonement (2001)
by Ian MacEwan
Another in a remarkable succession of books that were critically acclaimed, commercially succesful and the basis of succesful film versions, Atonement is the kind of novel that really deserves to be called "meta fiction," with a narrator who is a novelist who is writing a novel about a "real" event about her life, and a novel about her life. That person is Briony Tallis, who starts out as a young woman who wrongfully identifies her sister's new lover as a rapist, leading to his false imprisonment. The title refers to her atonement for that false accusation. Revealing that much is no spoiler, since Briony presents the initial accusation with a preface that she regrets what happened.
And although there is a very personal and intimate betrayal at the heart of Atonement, which is classic Ian MacEwan, there is little else to link this book to his earlier works, except the generally high level of execution and a history of twist-like third act resolutions. He's not know for historical fiction, and Atonement is mostly a work of historical fiction. No one is murdered, no animals are tortured. You could almost say he was selling out, were Atonement not based on a blatantly false mis-identification and subsequent imprisonment.
Published 3/11/18
by Jaime O'Neill
Irish authors occupy a unique position in the pantheon of modern writers. Ireland produced James Joyce, the most modern modernist of all and also the most romantic life-story of any 20th century novelist. Ireland also produced Samuel Beckett, more or less lineally from James Joyce, and Beckett won a uniquely important Nobel Prize in Literature, wrote books in French, and is himself the single most important modernist writer in addition to James Joyce. Flann O'Brian (Brian O'Nolan) exists at one remove from Beckett and Joyce, as a significant, but not the most significant, post-modernist writer. At Swim, Two Boys references the work of Flann O'Brien, At-Swim-Two-Birds, published in 1939.
Still, the Irish impact of 20th century avant-garde literature is second to none. What makes that more amazing is that the Irish impact on world literature outside that very small group is almost nill. There are very few Irish family sagas. There's no Irish equivalent for the post World War II generation of American or English authors, but ALL those authors were directly inspired by Joyce, Beckett and O'Brien. Of course, you can't leave out Edna O'Brien and John Banville must be acknowledged as a continuing force in international prestige literary fiction, but At Swim, Two Boys by Jaime O'Neill is a worthy addition to the high Irish literary tradition, a 550 page gay coming of age novel set outside and inside Dublin before and during the Easter Rebellion of 1916.
O'Neill focuses on three main characters, James, the younger son of an upwardly mobile Catholic shopkeeper, himself a veteran of the British Army; Doyler Doyle, the son of a local drunkard, also a British army veteran. James and Doyler find an unlikely friendship with a gay undertone, but nothing explicit. Doyler promises to teach James to swim to the rock, a local landmark difficult to reach because of the strength of the Irish coastal tides.
Meanwhile, Anthony MacMurrough, returns to the neighborhood where his spinster aunt is the sole remaining member of the local land owning family. MacMurrough has just spent two years in an English prison for "gross indecency" with a chauffeur. Anthony's ambitious aunt doesn't care, and moves forward with her plans to integrate Anthony back into Irish society, as she plots to end English rule in her native land.
O'Neill relies almost but not entirely on stream of consciousness techniques, switching between Anthony and James, or James and Doyler, often in the same chapter. In that sense, At Swim, Two Boys does resemble Joyce, but not the difficult machinations of O'Brien in At-Swim-Two-Birds. But the title of this book does accurately reflect that two boys swimming plays a central role in the plot. The success of At Swim, Two Boys is not just in it being an Irish gay coming of age story, but also for the Easter Rebellion back ground. Even with the stream of consciousness technique, there is enough information to allow the reader to follow the historical events of this interesting time.
Published 3/12/18
Austerlitz (2001)
by W.G. Sebald
Published just a month before W.G. Sebald died in an auto accident, Austerlitz was his last novel. One of the major consequences of the unexpected demise of a Nobel Prize in Literature level talent is that it forecloses the opportunity to actually win the Nobel Prize in Literature, since none of the Nobel's are awarded posthumously. Austerlitz, I think, is an impressive argument that Sebald was Nobel Prize worthy- it's a deeply moving account of a man, Jacques Austerlitz, and how rediscovers his family past after being orphaned during World War II. To call a work "Sebaldian" is to claim that said work is digressive, mingles plot and place indiscriminately, includes both fictional and non-fictional elements and defies easy categorization. Reading that list of descriptive characteristics, it's easy to see that the resulting work might be more alienating than appealing, but in Austerlitz, technique and story marry fully.
I listened to Austerlitz as an audio book on the hunch that Sebaldian prose would sound better spoken than read. Indeed, such was the case. I don't doubt that anyone who has trouble with written Sebald would be advised to try an audio book to really get the rhythm of the writing- which often takes the for of speech- one character relating to another a story told by a third character, or even a story told by another character, who told it to the relater, who is now telling it to the narrator. The prior sentence describes EVERY Sebald novel, not just Austerlitz, but it all really comes together in winning fashion in Austerlitz, which is, natch, another fine example of a German author grappling with the consequence of World War II in Germany. Perhaps unusual is that Sebald is a non Jewish German author writing a book from the perspective of the child of a Jewish victims of the Holocaust. The last layer of Austerlitz relating his story to the narrator saves it from being a book written directly from the perspective of a Jew (though now that I think about it, Austerlitz, raised in Wales, never says that he is a Jew, and he wasn't raised as one) but Austerlitz is a book, written by a German, that truly confronts the evil of the Holocaust, focusing on the mania for order that characterized the German effort at genocide.
Austerlitz (2001)
by W.G. Sebald
Published just a month before W.G. Sebald died in an auto accident, Austerlitz was his last novel. One of the major consequences of the unexpected demise of a Nobel Prize in Literature level talent is that it forecloses the opportunity to actually win the Nobel Prize in Literature, since none of the Nobel's are awarded posthumously. Austerlitz, I think, is an impressive argument that Sebald was Nobel Prize worthy- it's a deeply moving account of a man, Jacques Austerlitz, and how rediscovers his family past after being orphaned during World War II. To call a work "Sebaldian" is to claim that said work is digressive, mingles plot and place indiscriminately, includes both fictional and non-fictional elements and defies easy categorization. Reading that list of descriptive characteristics, it's easy to see that the resulting work might be more alienating than appealing, but in Austerlitz, technique and story marry fully.
I listened to Austerlitz as an audio book on the hunch that Sebaldian prose would sound better spoken than read. Indeed, such was the case. I don't doubt that anyone who has trouble with written Sebald would be advised to try an audio book to really get the rhythm of the writing- which often takes the for of speech- one character relating to another a story told by a third character, or even a story told by another character, who told it to the relater, who is now telling it to the narrator. The prior sentence describes EVERY Sebald novel, not just Austerlitz, but it all really comes together in winning fashion in Austerlitz, which is, natch, another fine example of a German author grappling with the consequence of World War II in Germany. Perhaps unusual is that Sebald is a non Jewish German author writing a book from the perspective of the child of a Jewish victims of the Holocaust. The last layer of Austerlitz relating his story to the narrator saves it from being a book written directly from the perspective of a Jew (though now that I think about it, Austerlitz, raised in Wales, never says that he is a Jew, and he wasn't raised as one) but Austerlitz is a book, written by a German, that truly confronts the evil of the Holocaust, focusing on the mania for order that characterized the German effort at genocide.
Published 3/16/18
Youth: Scenes from a Provincial Life II(2002)
J.M. Coetzee
Part of the unique appeal of being a succesful novelist is that you can stand apart from your artistic identity in a way that is difficult to impossible for people like actors and musicians. Literature is not immune to the fame fairy, particularly in places like France, where writers of fiction can become first class public intellectuals. England, too, the United States, not so much. More notable are canonical 20th century authors who have maintained total anonymity, J.D. Salinger and Thomas Pynchon being good examples of that type.
Before he began to publish his three part Scenes from a Provincial Life, Coetzee was more of the later than former, his Provincial Life trilogy established his actual, personal identity. The province in question is South Africa, particularly Boer South Africa, where Coetzee was raised by parents who he has willfully left behind, at the beginning of Youth, to make his own way through university. Before long, Coetzee has made his way to London, where he tried to balance a career (and contingent residence visa) as a computer programmer with his artistic aspirations. Young Coetzee takes Ezra Pound as his lode-star, and references to the business career of T.S. Eliot are frequent.
Coetzee, like Paul Auster, is one of those late 20th century authors who simply swamped the last few decades of the 1001 Books list, even including such an obviously secondary work like Youth. I kept trying to understand what his parents did to him, he never explains.
Youth: Scenes from a Provincial Life II(2002)
J.M. Coetzee
Part of the unique appeal of being a succesful novelist is that you can stand apart from your artistic identity in a way that is difficult to impossible for people like actors and musicians. Literature is not immune to the fame fairy, particularly in places like France, where writers of fiction can become first class public intellectuals. England, too, the United States, not so much. More notable are canonical 20th century authors who have maintained total anonymity, J.D. Salinger and Thomas Pynchon being good examples of that type.
Before he began to publish his three part Scenes from a Provincial Life, Coetzee was more of the later than former, his Provincial Life trilogy established his actual, personal identity. The province in question is South Africa, particularly Boer South Africa, where Coetzee was raised by parents who he has willfully left behind, at the beginning of Youth, to make his own way through university. Before long, Coetzee has made his way to London, where he tried to balance a career (and contingent residence visa) as a computer programmer with his artistic aspirations. Young Coetzee takes Ezra Pound as his lode-star, and references to the business career of T.S. Eliot are frequent.
Coetzee, like Paul Auster, is one of those late 20th century authors who simply swamped the last few decades of the 1001 Books list, even including such an obviously secondary work like Youth. I kept trying to understand what his parents did to him, he never explains.
Published 3/16/18
Platform (novel) (2001)
by Michel Houellebecq
I hate myself for loving Houellebecq, but I can't help it. His bleak existenialism and grasp of consumer society jargon (in translation, no less) transcends the French setting. Surely among the greatest of mysteries is the way an author can maintain status as a prose stylist in translation. It must be a credit to the translator, but here, Houellebecq actually writes in a kind of hybrid language, with English language words included amongst the French.
Platform is about a French civil servant who falls into a relationship with the assistant of a succesful business man in charge of marketing tourism in France. Valerie is her name. Valerie is more than an assistant, and she and her boss make a quick move to a large hospitality conglomerate seeking to resuscitate a recently purchased chain of Club Med style all inclusive resorts.
It should surprise anyone with the least familiarity with Houellebecq's oeuvre that Platform contains a lot of explicit sex, rendered in most non-pornographic tones. Houellebecq sets up a satisfying denouement that calls into question his critcs- who often castigate him for encouraging anti-Muslim sentiment. My take is that Houellebecq has trenchant things to say about French society, and French critics don't like it, and they don't understand the point he's trying to make. Or maybe they do and they are afraid he's right.
Platform (novel) (2001)
by Michel Houellebecq
I hate myself for loving Houellebecq, but I can't help it. His bleak existenialism and grasp of consumer society jargon (in translation, no less) transcends the French setting. Surely among the greatest of mysteries is the way an author can maintain status as a prose stylist in translation. It must be a credit to the translator, but here, Houellebecq actually writes in a kind of hybrid language, with English language words included amongst the French.
Platform is about a French civil servant who falls into a relationship with the assistant of a succesful business man in charge of marketing tourism in France. Valerie is her name. Valerie is more than an assistant, and she and her boss make a quick move to a large hospitality conglomerate seeking to resuscitate a recently purchased chain of Club Med style all inclusive resorts.
It should surprise anyone with the least familiarity with Houellebecq's oeuvre that Platform contains a lot of explicit sex, rendered in most non-pornographic tones. Houellebecq sets up a satisfying denouement that calls into question his critcs- who often castigate him for encouraging anti-Muslim sentiment. My take is that Houellebecq has trenchant things to say about French society, and French critics don't like it, and they don't understand the point he's trying to make. Or maybe they do and they are afraid he's right.
Published 3/18/18
Schooling (2001)
by Heather McGowan
Schooling is the debut novel by American writer Heather McGowan. It was published in 2001 to general acclaim, including being named the 2001 Newsweek Book of the Year. Adorable! Who knew such a thing existed? McGowan didn't really make a career out of it- she's got a stub Wikipedia page and no Facebook page. That's just evidence that she doesn't have much of an audience, not that those things matter in particular.
Like all other stream-of-consciousness style novels I've ever read, Schooling is not fun, despite the distinct impression of naughtiness conveyed by the decision by the publisher to use Thérèse (above) by Balthus as the cover illustration. All I'm going to say is, that, the use of the cover illustration and some of the text leads me to the conclusion that thirteen year old Catrine Evans has sex with Mr. Gilbert, the piano teacher. Is that a spoiler? Not if you understand the context of the Balthus painting they use as the cover illustration. That painting pretty much signifies child sex, even if in an artsy sense. After I finished Schooling, I went online and read reviews- something I should have done BEFORE or DURING the reading, because there were major plot elements that I just missed entirely.
by Heather McGowan
Schooling is the debut novel by American writer Heather McGowan. It was published in 2001 to general acclaim, including being named the 2001 Newsweek Book of the Year. Adorable! Who knew such a thing existed? McGowan didn't really make a career out of it- she's got a stub Wikipedia page and no Facebook page. That's just evidence that she doesn't have much of an audience, not that those things matter in particular.
Like all other stream-of-consciousness style novels I've ever read, Schooling is not fun, despite the distinct impression of naughtiness conveyed by the decision by the publisher to use Thérèse (above) by Balthus as the cover illustration. All I'm going to say is, that, the use of the cover illustration and some of the text leads me to the conclusion that thirteen year old Catrine Evans has sex with Mr. Gilbert, the piano teacher. Is that a spoiler? Not if you understand the context of the Balthus painting they use as the cover illustration. That painting pretty much signifies child sex, even if in an artsy sense. After I finished Schooling, I went online and read reviews- something I should have done BEFORE or DURING the reading, because there were major plot elements that I just missed entirely.
Published 3/18/18
Shroud (2002)
by John Banville
Irish author John Banville won the Booker Prize for his next novel, The Sea (2005) and Shroud similarly finds him in peak form, with a densely woven story about a Jewish Belgian who assumes the identity of a Nazi sympathetic non-Jewish classmate who dies during World War II. Shroud is squarely in the category of literature that treats World War II and the Holocaust as a symbolic, rather than personal event. Shroud is part of a trilogy of novels from the "Alexander and Cass Cleave Trilogy" but the only one of the three to be included (the first novel in the trilogy was published in 2000 and the last in 2012.
If I haven't said it before, I'll say it now- Banville is Literature capital L, like, decent odds to win the Nobel Prize in Literature type prose. All of his books, I'm sure (except maybe the crime fiction he writes under a pseudonym) bear careful and even multiple readings. I was comforted to read after finishing that Banville considers his main character "despicable," I was worried he was supposed to be sympathetic. Shroud takes the form of Axel Vander, famous man of letters, reminiscing about his past as he prepares for a confrontation with a young woman (Cass Cleave) who is going to expose not only his assumed identity, but also pro-Nazi editorials written by the real Axel Vander before he died.
Writing it in summary form as above does not do justice to the density of the prose. In fact, it's again hard to really appreciate Shroud without having an understanding of the plot outline before you start. When you are dealing with Literature capital L, making use of study aids before and during reading is perfectly acceptable.
Shroud (2002)
by John Banville
Irish author John Banville won the Booker Prize for his next novel, The Sea (2005) and Shroud similarly finds him in peak form, with a densely woven story about a Jewish Belgian who assumes the identity of a Nazi sympathetic non-Jewish classmate who dies during World War II. Shroud is squarely in the category of literature that treats World War II and the Holocaust as a symbolic, rather than personal event. Shroud is part of a trilogy of novels from the "Alexander and Cass Cleave Trilogy" but the only one of the three to be included (the first novel in the trilogy was published in 2000 and the last in 2012.
If I haven't said it before, I'll say it now- Banville is Literature capital L, like, decent odds to win the Nobel Prize in Literature type prose. All of his books, I'm sure (except maybe the crime fiction he writes under a pseudonym) bear careful and even multiple readings. I was comforted to read after finishing that Banville considers his main character "despicable," I was worried he was supposed to be sympathetic. Shroud takes the form of Axel Vander, famous man of letters, reminiscing about his past as he prepares for a confrontation with a young woman (Cass Cleave) who is going to expose not only his assumed identity, but also pro-Nazi editorials written by the real Axel Vander before he died.
Writing it in summary form as above does not do justice to the density of the prose. In fact, it's again hard to really appreciate Shroud without having an understanding of the plot outline before you start. When you are dealing with Literature capital L, making use of study aids before and during reading is perfectly acceptable.
Published 3/22/18
The Double (2002)
by Jose Saramago
Jose Saramago is not a good choice for an Ebook read. His sentences spin and sprawl, a modern version of a Borgesian language labyrinth, meaning that one Ebook page might not even contain a full sentence. It's not the plot that is complicated, a fairly standard "man discovers he has an doppelganger in the world and becomes obsessed" riff that is weighed down by the layers of self reflection that dog haunt Tertuliano Maximo Alonso, the history teacher and protagonist. I find a common reaction reading Saramago is that I want the characters to do something, anything, besides reflect.
Like, the The History of the Siege of Lisbon, which turns on a momentary decision by a translator to insert a "not" into a single sentence, The Double turns around a single moment where Alonso sees his double as an extra in an rented video cassette. His obsession is understandable but Saramago's obfuscation of every possible action or conversation left me unmoved. The Double was written after his Nobel Prize in Literature, so he was writing after having his greatness confirmed and to me, The Double read like an author who has no more points to make.
The Double (2002)
by Jose Saramago
Jose Saramago is not a good choice for an Ebook read. His sentences spin and sprawl, a modern version of a Borgesian language labyrinth, meaning that one Ebook page might not even contain a full sentence. It's not the plot that is complicated, a fairly standard "man discovers he has an doppelganger in the world and becomes obsessed" riff that is weighed down by the layers of self reflection that dog haunt Tertuliano Maximo Alonso, the history teacher and protagonist. I find a common reaction reading Saramago is that I want the characters to do something, anything, besides reflect.
Like, the The History of the Siege of Lisbon, which turns on a momentary decision by a translator to insert a "not" into a single sentence, The Double turns around a single moment where Alonso sees his double as an extra in an rented video cassette. His obsession is understandable but Saramago's obfuscation of every possible action or conversation left me unmoved. The Double was written after his Nobel Prize in Literature, so he was writing after having his greatness confirmed and to me, The Double read like an author who has no more points to make.
Published 2/2/19
Small Remedies (2000)
by Shashi Deshpande
Trying to discuss "Indian literature" is like trying to discuss "European Literature," and there are a half dozen more or less independent literary traditions in different languages, from different parts of India and including an incredibly over-represented population of expatriate authors of Indian birth or ancestry. If you want to expand the designation to South Asia, you throw in the Pakistanis, who have a less diverse but equally vibrant literary scene with their own cast of expatriate/emigre authors.
Each independent culture gets it's own bildungsroman, it's own multi-generational family saga (an especially vibrant genre for Indian authors) and then on top of that you consider women authors, the largely still absent lgbt community and class/caste distinctions- again a particularly relevant area for Indian writers, and you can see how the subject of Indian/South Asian literature has enough action to keep a casual reader occupied for years.
Deshpande made it into the first edition of the 1001 Books list with Small Remedies. Deshpande published her first novel in 1980, so Small Remedies came well into her career. Deshpande is a well-established author inside India, but I don't believe she even has an American publisher, and Small Remedies was published by Penguin India. I ended up having to buy the UK edition from Amazon since the Los Angeles Public Library doesn't carry it- shocking.
Once I actuall acquired the book I managed to misplace it in the trunk of my car for six months, and so, finally, I sat down and read it. I can see what Deshpande brings to the table: strong female voices from INSIDE India (as supposed to expatriate authors) are in short supply, and Deshpande must have been one of the first to really establish herself, and the fact that she lived inside India makes her achievement all the more impressive. Probably though it has limited her appeal to English language audiences in the UK and the US, which I'm sure doesn't matter to her.
Madhu, the narrator, is grieving the loss of her only son, her marriage to her Doctor husband Som is in shambles. Grief stricken, she leaves her comfort-less surroundings to write the biography of Savitribai Indorekar, or "Bai," a popular singer and musician who scandalized her well-off Hindu family by leaving her husband and child and taking up with her Muslim accompanist. There isn't much new here in terms of class- aside from an early chapter where Madhu complains about the location of the toilet at the flat where she is staying while she writes Bai's biography- there is little of the noise and chaos that characterizes the Indian of most contemporary novelists.
Of course, the death of a child is a big deal anywhere, but especially so in India, where the life of a childless woman is commonly considered meaningless. I'm making this statement just based on the literature, but there is no doubt that the cult of the individual which so characterizes western fiction is almost wholly absent in Indian literature.
Small Remedies (2000)
by Shashi Deshpande
Trying to discuss "Indian literature" is like trying to discuss "European Literature," and there are a half dozen more or less independent literary traditions in different languages, from different parts of India and including an incredibly over-represented population of expatriate authors of Indian birth or ancestry. If you want to expand the designation to South Asia, you throw in the Pakistanis, who have a less diverse but equally vibrant literary scene with their own cast of expatriate/emigre authors.
Each independent culture gets it's own bildungsroman, it's own multi-generational family saga (an especially vibrant genre for Indian authors) and then on top of that you consider women authors, the largely still absent lgbt community and class/caste distinctions- again a particularly relevant area for Indian writers, and you can see how the subject of Indian/South Asian literature has enough action to keep a casual reader occupied for years.
Deshpande made it into the first edition of the 1001 Books list with Small Remedies. Deshpande published her first novel in 1980, so Small Remedies came well into her career. Deshpande is a well-established author inside India, but I don't believe she even has an American publisher, and Small Remedies was published by Penguin India. I ended up having to buy the UK edition from Amazon since the Los Angeles Public Library doesn't carry it- shocking.
Once I actuall acquired the book I managed to misplace it in the trunk of my car for six months, and so, finally, I sat down and read it. I can see what Deshpande brings to the table: strong female voices from INSIDE India (as supposed to expatriate authors) are in short supply, and Deshpande must have been one of the first to really establish herself, and the fact that she lived inside India makes her achievement all the more impressive. Probably though it has limited her appeal to English language audiences in the UK and the US, which I'm sure doesn't matter to her.
Madhu, the narrator, is grieving the loss of her only son, her marriage to her Doctor husband Som is in shambles. Grief stricken, she leaves her comfort-less surroundings to write the biography of Savitribai Indorekar, or "Bai," a popular singer and musician who scandalized her well-off Hindu family by leaving her husband and child and taking up with her Muslim accompanist. There isn't much new here in terms of class- aside from an early chapter where Madhu complains about the location of the toilet at the flat where she is staying while she writes Bai's biography- there is little of the noise and chaos that characterizes the Indian of most contemporary novelists.
Of course, the death of a child is a big deal anywhere, but especially so in India, where the life of a childless woman is commonly considered meaningless. I'm making this statement just based on the literature, but there is no doubt that the cult of the individual which so characterizes western fiction is almost wholly absent in Indian literature.
Published 2/12/19
Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture (2001)
by Apostolos Doxaidis
Replaces: Intimacy by Hanif Kureishi
Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture is another example of the "international bestseller" category of canonical literary fiction. Doxaidis is of Greek ancestry but raised in Australia, however he started his literary career in Greek, and Uncle Petros was originally written in Greek, then translated by the author himself and published in the UK and US, where it was, I gather, a hit.
The unnamed narrator is a Greek student who leaves to study math in the United States (echoing the life experience of the author, who studied math at Columbia University. Uncle Petros is the brother of his succesful merchant father, a family black sheep, who had early, precocious success as a mathematician but failed to leave a mark. To the narrator he is a washed up loner, and it is only over the court of the novel that the narrator learns the truth of his uncle's life, who is both more brilliant and sadder than he initially believed.
Doxaidis clearly knows his math and he cleverly includes real life mathematicians from the early 20th century as characters in the story. There isn't anything particularly Greek about Uncle Petros- even the Greek locations seem generic. I positively hated Intimacy, the Kureishi novel about a middle aged man who decides to leave his wife and children.
Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture (2001)
by Apostolos Doxaidis
Replaces: Intimacy by Hanif Kureishi
Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture is another example of the "international bestseller" category of canonical literary fiction. Doxaidis is of Greek ancestry but raised in Australia, however he started his literary career in Greek, and Uncle Petros was originally written in Greek, then translated by the author himself and published in the UK and US, where it was, I gather, a hit.
The unnamed narrator is a Greek student who leaves to study math in the United States (echoing the life experience of the author, who studied math at Columbia University. Uncle Petros is the brother of his succesful merchant father, a family black sheep, who had early, precocious success as a mathematician but failed to leave a mark. To the narrator he is a washed up loner, and it is only over the court of the novel that the narrator learns the truth of his uncle's life, who is both more brilliant and sadder than he initially believed.
Doxaidis clearly knows his math and he cleverly includes real life mathematicians from the early 20th century as characters in the story. There isn't anything particularly Greek about Uncle Petros- even the Greek locations seem generic. I positively hated Intimacy, the Kureishi novel about a middle aged man who decides to leave his wife and children.
Published 2/26/19
The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll (2002)
by Alvaro Mutis
Replaces: The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie
In 2002, the New York Review of Books published an English translation of Colombian writer Alvaro Mutis' six novella series about Magroll the Gaviero(which means "topsail" and also means seagull), a peripetic sailor whose itinerary typically evokes immediate comparisons with Joseph Conrad. Francisco Goldman, writing the introduction for the English language translation, rather dismisses the Conrad comparison in favor of the authors own preference for comparisons to Proust, and yeah, OK, I mean who wouldn't rather be compared to Proust than Conrad, but Mutis writes about the seamans life, in the same obscure corners of the globe that Conrad covered, and I just think it's impossible to read Mutis without thinking about Joseph Conrad.
Mutis hasn't found much of an audience in the English speaking world. He doesn't fit into the literary world of magical realism. The prose is florid, at times purple, like Mutis was writing in the late 19th century (again, Conrad comes to mind.) The original Spanish language collection of the novellas was published in 1993, so even given the 10 year lag, Mutis was still writing out of time, like a throwback to the previous century of literature.
At 700 pages, The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll isn't a light read- I would have loved to have listened to an Audiobook edition but sigh it doesn't exist! I don't think the New York Review of Books does Audiobook editions. I'm actually going to check on that when I get done, because if there is one publishing concern I intend to closely monitor for new releases in the future it's going to be the New York Review of Books. Anyway- it's not a light read, but because it is seven novellas strung together, and because Mutis doesn't make following the story hard on the reader- it's basically Maqroll recalling his adventures; The Adventures of Misadventures of Magroll goes by faster than what you would expect from a 700 page book.
The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll (2002)
by Alvaro Mutis
Replaces: The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie
In 2002, the New York Review of Books published an English translation of Colombian writer Alvaro Mutis' six novella series about Magroll the Gaviero(which means "topsail" and also means seagull), a peripetic sailor whose itinerary typically evokes immediate comparisons with Joseph Conrad. Francisco Goldman, writing the introduction for the English language translation, rather dismisses the Conrad comparison in favor of the authors own preference for comparisons to Proust, and yeah, OK, I mean who wouldn't rather be compared to Proust than Conrad, but Mutis writes about the seamans life, in the same obscure corners of the globe that Conrad covered, and I just think it's impossible to read Mutis without thinking about Joseph Conrad.
Mutis hasn't found much of an audience in the English speaking world. He doesn't fit into the literary world of magical realism. The prose is florid, at times purple, like Mutis was writing in the late 19th century (again, Conrad comes to mind.) The original Spanish language collection of the novellas was published in 1993, so even given the 10 year lag, Mutis was still writing out of time, like a throwback to the previous century of literature.
At 700 pages, The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll isn't a light read- I would have loved to have listened to an Audiobook edition but sigh it doesn't exist! I don't think the New York Review of Books does Audiobook editions. I'm actually going to check on that when I get done, because if there is one publishing concern I intend to closely monitor for new releases in the future it's going to be the New York Review of Books. Anyway- it's not a light read, but because it is seven novellas strung together, and because Mutis doesn't make following the story hard on the reader- it's basically Maqroll recalling his adventures; The Adventures of Misadventures of Magroll goes by faster than what you would expect from a 700 page book.
Published 4/1/19
Half a Life (2001)
by V.S. Naipaul
Half a Life is book one of Naipaul's two book series about the life of Willie Somerset Chandran, the son of a Brahmin "Holy Man" and his untouchable wife. Half a Life covers Chandran's early life in India, his time as a student in London, and his 20 years in Mozambique as the husband of a wealthy half-Portuguese, half-African woman, Anna, who claims him as her own after she reads his book of short stories.
I managed to listen to Magic Seeds, the 2004 sequel, as an Audiobook before I heard Half a Life. Both books are on the short side- Half a Life is only 211 pages in print and it is a little surprising that Naipaul decided to publish Half a Life and Magic Seeds as two separate volumes. Half a Life was a Booker Prize longlister, unlike Magic Seeds. Chandran is a classic Naipaul protagonist, the most unique aspect of that role being his unusual mixed caste parentage.
Perhaps it isn't surprising that Half a Life ends up being more about sex than anything else. In particular the final chapter- which is nearly half the length of the book, involves Chandran monologuing to his sister, to whose Berlin house he has decamped after abandoning his wife about the series of erotic adventures that immediately preceded his decision to leave Mozambique behind.
Naipaul is endlessly fascinating to me, I just can't get enough of his perspectives. It's enough to make we want to read secondary books on his work, get to know the criticisms better, read a biography. I have the idea in my head that he was a miserable person in real life, that seems pretty common for prize winning authors.
Half a Life (2001)
by V.S. Naipaul
Half a Life is book one of Naipaul's two book series about the life of Willie Somerset Chandran, the son of a Brahmin "Holy Man" and his untouchable wife. Half a Life covers Chandran's early life in India, his time as a student in London, and his 20 years in Mozambique as the husband of a wealthy half-Portuguese, half-African woman, Anna, who claims him as her own after she reads his book of short stories.
I managed to listen to Magic Seeds, the 2004 sequel, as an Audiobook before I heard Half a Life. Both books are on the short side- Half a Life is only 211 pages in print and it is a little surprising that Naipaul decided to publish Half a Life and Magic Seeds as two separate volumes. Half a Life was a Booker Prize longlister, unlike Magic Seeds. Chandran is a classic Naipaul protagonist, the most unique aspect of that role being his unusual mixed caste parentage.
Perhaps it isn't surprising that Half a Life ends up being more about sex than anything else. In particular the final chapter- which is nearly half the length of the book, involves Chandran monologuing to his sister, to whose Berlin house he has decamped after abandoning his wife about the series of erotic adventures that immediately preceded his decision to leave Mozambique behind.
Naipaul is endlessly fascinating to me, I just can't get enough of his perspectives. It's enough to make we want to read secondary books on his work, get to know the criticisms better, read a biography. I have the idea in my head that he was a miserable person in real life, that seems pretty common for prize winning authors.
Published 7/22/19
That They May Face the Rising Sun (2002)
by John McGahern
That They May Face the Rising Sun was the last novelist by Irish author John McGahern. McGahern died in 2006, and at the time of his death he was lauded as, "the most important Irish writer since Beckett" among other accolades and plaudits. The 1001 Books project rewarded him by removing this book from their first revision, replacing it with a book by Jose Carlos Somoza, and reducing him to one book (Amongst Women.)
Published in the United States as By The Lake- I had a hard time tracking down a copy- since I didn't figure out about the different title until after I'd found a copy with the UK title, bought it on Amazon and then let it sit around my house for a solid year before finally gritting my teeth and sitting down to read it.
That They May Face the Rising Sun charts a year in the life of an Irish couple who have moved back to the Irish country side after living in London, he a writer and she an advertising executive. A reader could be forgiven if they would expect lots of information about the life left behind, but quite the opposite- both the wife and husband of the repatriated pair, the Ruttledge's do their best to obscure themselves in the farming community which surrounds them.
The first hundred pages are so low key that they are practically somnolent- after buying this book it took me a half dozen tries to get past the first 50 pages, but the reader is rewarded, as the 'action' picks up towards the middle and end: selling lambs at the county fair, a mail order bride for the local rake, etc. Nothing really happens with the Ruttledge's themselves- no dramatic infidelity or one or the other decamping back to London.
The country side is evoked beautifully, as you'd expect.
That They May Face the Rising Sun (2002)
by John McGahern
That They May Face the Rising Sun was the last novelist by Irish author John McGahern. McGahern died in 2006, and at the time of his death he was lauded as, "the most important Irish writer since Beckett" among other accolades and plaudits. The 1001 Books project rewarded him by removing this book from their first revision, replacing it with a book by Jose Carlos Somoza, and reducing him to one book (Amongst Women.)
Published in the United States as By The Lake- I had a hard time tracking down a copy- since I didn't figure out about the different title until after I'd found a copy with the UK title, bought it on Amazon and then let it sit around my house for a solid year before finally gritting my teeth and sitting down to read it.
That They May Face the Rising Sun charts a year in the life of an Irish couple who have moved back to the Irish country side after living in London, he a writer and she an advertising executive. A reader could be forgiven if they would expect lots of information about the life left behind, but quite the opposite- both the wife and husband of the repatriated pair, the Ruttledge's do their best to obscure themselves in the farming community which surrounds them.
The first hundred pages are so low key that they are practically somnolent- after buying this book it took me a half dozen tries to get past the first 50 pages, but the reader is rewarded, as the 'action' picks up towards the middle and end: selling lambs at the county fair, a mail order bride for the local rake, etc. Nothing really happens with the Ruttledge's themselves- no dramatic infidelity or one or the other decamping back to London.
The country side is evoked beautifully, as you'd expect.
Published 1/7/20
Simon and the Oaks (2000)
by Marianne Fredricksson
Replaces: Jazz by Toni Morrison
Simon and the Oaks, by Swedish author Marianne Fredricksson, was a tough get. Eventually I bought the UK edition on Amazon- there was no American edition published, and it isn't carried in the Los Angeles Public Library system (!) After I finally bought it late last year it languished in my work briefcase for MONTHS and I ended up reading the last hundred pages in one fevered day sitting in Federal Court.
Simon and the Oaks is a bildungsroman about Simon Larsson, the son of an itinerant Jewish violinist and a working class Swedish woman, who gives birth to Simon in the early stages of the Nazi takeover and never hears from her Jewish love again. Simon is raised by the sister of his mother- childless- who is married to an enterprising working class Swedish man. As a child, Simon befriends Isak Lentov, the son of a Jewish immigrant who fled the Nazi's before things got bad. Much of the story focuses on Isak and his relationship with Simon before it focuses in on Simon and Isak fades to the edges.
Fredricksson's prose- in the excellent English translation- has a timeless quality, and the treatment of the Jewish experience in Sweden is unusual. Simon and the Oaks also spawned a succesful movie version that didn't make it to American but well abroad. I was surprised to see that this book knocks out Jazz by Toni Morrison- I would think they would keep Morrison, but the switch is in keeping with the trend of Authors with multiple titles in the first edition having their representation reduced in the second edition of the 1001 Books series.
Simon and the Oaks (2000)
by Marianne Fredricksson
Replaces: Jazz by Toni Morrison
Simon and the Oaks, by Swedish author Marianne Fredricksson, was a tough get. Eventually I bought the UK edition on Amazon- there was no American edition published, and it isn't carried in the Los Angeles Public Library system (!) After I finally bought it late last year it languished in my work briefcase for MONTHS and I ended up reading the last hundred pages in one fevered day sitting in Federal Court.
Simon and the Oaks is a bildungsroman about Simon Larsson, the son of an itinerant Jewish violinist and a working class Swedish woman, who gives birth to Simon in the early stages of the Nazi takeover and never hears from her Jewish love again. Simon is raised by the sister of his mother- childless- who is married to an enterprising working class Swedish man. As a child, Simon befriends Isak Lentov, the son of a Jewish immigrant who fled the Nazi's before things got bad. Much of the story focuses on Isak and his relationship with Simon before it focuses in on Simon and Isak fades to the edges.
Fredricksson's prose- in the excellent English translation- has a timeless quality, and the treatment of the Jewish experience in Sweden is unusual. Simon and the Oaks also spawned a succesful movie version that didn't make it to American but well abroad. I was surprised to see that this book knocks out Jazz by Toni Morrison- I would think they would keep Morrison, but the switch is in keeping with the trend of Authors with multiple titles in the first edition having their representation reduced in the second edition of the 1001 Books series.
 |
| Nobel Prize winning Polish author Olga Tokarczuk |
House of Day, House of Night (2003)
by Olga Tokarczuk
I was in City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco last fall and I saw this 2003 Northwestern Press edition of Olga Tokarczuk's edition advertised as her "first English translation." The Polish language edition was published in 1998. Tokarczuk's first book was published in 1989, so we're talking about a book that is mid career in terms of her bibliography, but first in terms of her English language bibliography if Northwestern Press to be believed.
I'm happy that I'd read Flights before the win- I believe that before Flights won the Booker International Prize the level of awareness around Tokarczuk in the United States was negligible. Has she ever done a reading in Los Angeles? House of Day, House of Night reminded me in many ways of Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of Dead. House of Day, House of Night is a much more consciously 'literary affair" while Drive Your Plow is a literary fiction/detective fiction cross-over of the sort that can gain a literary author a wider, mass audience (which it did, in her case.)
House of Day shares a location with Drive Your Plow- the Polish Czech border area that was also part of Germany for a large part of the 20th century. I believe it's also the area where Tokarczuk has lived and worked for the past 20 years- the equivalent of of a New York based writer moving to someplace like San Antonio or New Mexico. The larger district is called Nowa Ruda, and while Drive Your Plow takes place there, House of Day is ABOUT Nowa Ruda, and really not about much else. Using the narrator as a link, Tokarczuk relates the history of the area in episodes going back several hundred years.
I'd read more by Tokarczuk- how little I know about Poland, its land, the people.
 |
| Fernando Pessoa, Portuguese writer |
The Book of Disquiet (2003)
by Fernando Pessoa
Replaces: Billy Bathgate by E.L. Doctorow
Fernando Pessoa was a Portuguese poet and writer who defied the categorization that is part and parcel of gaining literary fame in the 20th century. He died in 1935, but most of the listings in his bibliography date from the 1990's and beyond, including the first English language edition of The Book of Disquiet, which apparently came out in 1991. The quirky publishing history stems from the fact that while Pessoa left a locked check with 25,000 unpublished pages of prose and poetry at his death. These pages have been in the Portuguese national library since 1988, and The Book of Disquiet represents a posthumous editing and organization of a small part of some of these materials.
The style of The Book of Disquiet is aphoristic, somewhere between Nietzsche and Joris-Karl Husmans. Pessoa, in the guise of Bernardo Soares, is clearly a fan of the stoics and epicureans, and not a fan of humanity, or interacting with humanity. He preaches withdrawal and self-deletion. If you are inclined in the direction of the Decadent movement, on the late 19th century, or an existentialist or follower of one of the many iterations of 1960's spawned counter-culture, Pessoa is worth checking out- this being more or less the only book of his you'll ever see in English.
 |
| The Slynx (2003) by Russian author Tatyana Tolstaya, published by the New York Review of Books |
Published 3/20/20
The Slynx (2003)
by Tatyana Tolstaya
New York Review of Books Publishing
translated from the Russian by Jamey Gambrell
I am excited to dig in to the New York Review of Books catalog on my brand new 5th Kindle. I love the backlighting on the newer Kindles. Like many books I pick, The Slynx combines fiction in translation, literature and speculative fiction. The Slynx is a brazenly post-apocalyptic tale set in the area surrounding Moscow, 200 years after "the Blast" (a nuclear holocaust) has reduced society to a level to what one might call "the stone age," only minus the wonders of nature and animals one can hunt. Instead, most people subsist entirely on meals made from mice, which also serve as currency. There are no pack animals, and ill favored members of society are dubbed "Degenerators" and force to serve as horses to pull the chariots of the wealthy. Those called the Oldeners mutated so that they do not age, but they are not held in high regard. For most others there are "Consequences" mutations from the nuclear apocalypse.
Benedikt, the narrator, isn't so bad off given the parameters of his universe. He has a job transcribing books- copying books- one should say- and he is engaged to a lovely girl with claws for feet, who is the daughter of the leading Saniturions, a secret police charged with hunting down any loose knowledge and punishing those who withhold such knowledge, contained in left over books, from the government.
Even allowing for the translation and Tolstaya's use of Russian derived jargon that has no English translation, The Slynx is a comfortable read, comparable to the dialect in A Clockwork Orange, and I would well recommend it to anyone with an interest in dystopian/speculative/translated fiction.
Published 6/10/20
Millennium People (2003)
by J.G. Ballard
Beginning a conversation about the bibliography requires acknowledging the breadth of his published work. Nineteen novels and over fifteen short story collections, with a half dozen "best of" collections interspersed between them. On this blog I've hit The Drowned World (1962), The Atrocity Exhibition (1970), High Rise (1974), Crash (1973), Empire of the Sun (1984), Cocaine Nights (1996) and Super Cannes (2000)- all selections from the original 1001 Books list, circa 2006.
The first thing to do is to cut the existing list in half to acknowledge that a 2006 era canon lacked diversity. Empire of the Sun is the number one book- ironically the least "Ballardian" of Ballard's bibliography and also the most enduring, probably because of the success of the Steven Spielberg directed movie version. Since he has seven titles on the original list, I'll cut him down to four instead of three- because Empire of the Sun is not really representative of the over-all feel of his work, but is also the biggest and most popular book of all.
With three titles left, the accepted formulation is to pick one early/first book, one mid career book, and one from the end/peak. There isn't really a "first" novel to point to for Ballard because of his roots as a genre writer of science fiction. A good early pick is The Drowned World because it's his second book and because it stands in thematically for a host of his other early books: see, The Burning World and The Crystal World, especially, as well as for his early short story collections. This is J.G. Ballard as an ambitious but still work a day genre writer of science fiction.
For "mid career" it's books published in the 1970's, since Empire of the Sun is already in there to represent the 80's. 1001 Books gives three potential picks: The Atrocity Exhibition, High Rise and Crash. I think the clear choice is Crash, both in terms of the long term popular success- again tied to a succesful movie version, this time by David Cronenberg. Crash also is the best expression of the Ballardian obsession with the nexus of sex, death and technology.
The last pick- from the late/career capper category boils down to Cocaine Nights or Super Cannes. The two books cover similar terrain: retirement communities in southern Europe populated by alienated middle aged English people, up to no good, in a minor way. Modern consumer society is rubbish, is the theme from this period. I would pick Cocaine Nights, but it is tough to say one book is better than the other.
Millennium People was his second to last novel, and it echoes the themes of Cocaine Nights and Super Cannes, but moves the action to greater London and takes the break off the slowly building pseudo-criminal menace of those books. Here, the Millennium People are middle class terrorists. After I realized this book had been published after 9/11, I had a hard time taking it seriously- didn't Ballard understand by this point that the real terrorists were real terrorists? It's like a plot that is forty years too late. There can be no argument that Millennium People deserves to replace another Ballard pick.
Published 7/29/20
Cosmopolis (2003)
by Don DeLillo
This is my 10th Don DeLillo novel, out sixteen published since 1971. The ones I've got left are the really early books, Americana(1971), End Zone(1972), Great Jones Street(1973). His most recent novel, Zero K and a couple of titles from the late 70's. Cosmopolis ranks among my least favorite DeLillo books- which almost reads like it was written with a (terrible) movie in mind. The Audiobook narrator, actor Will Patton, sounds like he is doing a Glengarry Glen Ross imitation, and DeLillo proves himself no exception to observation that fiction writers after World War II have a hard time writing characters who are extremely wealthy. At no time during my listen to the Audiobook of Cosmopolis did I believe that Eric Packer was a 28 year old "billionaire" if only because few billionaire's make their money managing other peoples money. That's more like a thing millionaire's do. Billionaire's are their own fund.
Also, I found DeLillo's treatment of currency trading superficial and the entire plot- which takes place during a car ride that Packer takes in quest of a haircut, wasn't interesting in the least- more like a parody of a Don DeLillo novel, or perhaps a satire. Except Cosmopolis is actually a novel written by Don DeLillo. From here, it seems like he peaked around Underworld (1997), and the "prime" DeLillo period runs from The Names (1982), where he started to put together his moody, paranoid, talky action vibe, through White Noise and then Libra, Mao II and Underworld. After that it's The Body Artist (2001) *clunk*, this book *clunk*, Falling Man (2007)*clunk* and Point Omega (2010)*double clunk*
Published 8/13/21
The Good Doctor (2003)
by Damon Galgut
I'm going back and looking at South African author Damon Galgut's bibliography after his most recent book, The Promise, made the Booker Prize longlist. Galgut has already shortlisted twice, for this book and Strange Room (2010). The Good Doctor was his break-out book, twenty years after he published his first novel, A Sinless Season, in 1982. He remains largely unknown in the US, with none of his books garnering more than 200 ratings on Amazon.
As far as first impressions go, The Good Doctor is a solid win- a very Coetzeian tale of two white doctors stranded in a decrepit quasi-abandoned South African homeland. One doctor is there for his year of national service, the other- the narrator- is older, and has fled a nasty separation after his wife ran off with his best friend. If you are familiar with the oeuvre of Coetzee there won't be many surprises in The Good Doctor, but I quite enjoyed the read, and look forward to taking in more of his books- including The Promise, which I actually found at the local Barnes & Noble- they had one copy!
Published 4/3/18
Fingersmith (2002)
by Sarah Waters
I was reading the Kindle version of this book (511 pages) on my Samsung Galaxy 8 at the same time I was listening to the audio book of Cryptonomicon on the same device- which means just using my phone I was able to read/hear over 1600 pages of text in a little over a week. Reading Fingersmith on my phone made me brutally aware that the Ebook format is not particularly good for book much over 400 pages long. Reading using the Kindle app on a smartphone is best for public places and in between moments when one might otherwise be looking at a phone. Reading a 500+ page book, on the other hand, requires multiple sessions of focused attention- for me we are talking about about 5 hours, and for an average reader it is more like 10 hours. That's tough to chisel out on a smartphone without getting distracted. I ended up having to spend most of a Saturday afternoon reading a book on my phone, earning me some puzzled looks from my partner, who assumed I was playing a video game for much of that time.
Format issues aside, I quite enjoyed Fingersmith, which is a type of revisionist historical novel in the mode of Charles Dickens or Wilkie Collins, about an orphan girl from the Cockney East End of London, recruited by "Gentleman" a debonair con-man, to swindle a supposedly unsophisticated woman out of her fortune. To the surprise of no one, nothing is as it seems, and the reader is treated to an enjoyably familiar romp through 19th century England, where the sex and violence has been written back into the story. Waters was already a known commodity when Fingersmith was published, but Fingersmith was a hit, and brought her to the attention of a wider, general audience. Fingersmith, despite the length, is light enough to recommend as a good book for a beach read, and given the length you certainly want to get the paperback edition.
Fingersmith (2002)
by Sarah Waters
I was reading the Kindle version of this book (511 pages) on my Samsung Galaxy 8 at the same time I was listening to the audio book of Cryptonomicon on the same device- which means just using my phone I was able to read/hear over 1600 pages of text in a little over a week. Reading Fingersmith on my phone made me brutally aware that the Ebook format is not particularly good for book much over 400 pages long. Reading using the Kindle app on a smartphone is best for public places and in between moments when one might otherwise be looking at a phone. Reading a 500+ page book, on the other hand, requires multiple sessions of focused attention- for me we are talking about about 5 hours, and for an average reader it is more like 10 hours. That's tough to chisel out on a smartphone without getting distracted. I ended up having to spend most of a Saturday afternoon reading a book on my phone, earning me some puzzled looks from my partner, who assumed I was playing a video game for much of that time.
Format issues aside, I quite enjoyed Fingersmith, which is a type of revisionist historical novel in the mode of Charles Dickens or Wilkie Collins, about an orphan girl from the Cockney East End of London, recruited by "Gentleman" a debonair con-man, to swindle a supposedly unsophisticated woman out of her fortune. To the surprise of no one, nothing is as it seems, and the reader is treated to an enjoyably familiar romp through 19th century England, where the sex and violence has been written back into the story. Waters was already a known commodity when Fingersmith was published, but Fingersmith was a hit, and brought her to the attention of a wider, general audience. Fingersmith, despite the length, is light enough to recommend as a good book for a beach read, and given the length you certainly want to get the paperback edition.
Published 4/3/18
Elizabeth Costello (2003)
by J.M. Coetzee
Coetzee insisted that Elizabeth Costello, about an older Australian novelist criss-crossing the globe giving various talks on subjects related and not related to her area of expertise, but there is no denying the fact that the material that comprises the in book lectures by Costello is directed adapted from various published papers and talks that Coetzee himself has given over the years.
Like another late Coetzee entry on the 1001 Books list, Youth: Scene from a Provincial Life, Elizabeth Costello is as much a source of insight into Coetzee the human being as it an example of Coetzee the author. I believe it to be axiomatic that great artists often have strained relationships with their immediate surroundings, and that is an impression reinforced by both the lecture texts of Elizabeth Costello and the biography of Youth: Scenes from a Provincial Life. You can convincingly argue that an alienation from ones immediate surroundings is a pre-condition for novel writing itself. beginning with the often immediate financial needs of the first novelists of the 18th century, to the more aesthetic dissatisfaction of the high modernists, ranging from Proust to Joyce and carrying through to our own time.
But the fussy pre-occupations of Elizabeth Costello are those of a globe-trotting, internationally famous "lady novelist," and those looking for more immediate critiques of society, such as those contained in the meat of Coetzee's oeuvre, are likely to be disgruntled. Or at least, not gruntled.
Elizabeth Costello (2003)
by J.M. Coetzee
Coetzee insisted that Elizabeth Costello, about an older Australian novelist criss-crossing the globe giving various talks on subjects related and not related to her area of expertise, but there is no denying the fact that the material that comprises the in book lectures by Costello is directed adapted from various published papers and talks that Coetzee himself has given over the years.
Like another late Coetzee entry on the 1001 Books list, Youth: Scene from a Provincial Life, Elizabeth Costello is as much a source of insight into Coetzee the human being as it an example of Coetzee the author. I believe it to be axiomatic that great artists often have strained relationships with their immediate surroundings, and that is an impression reinforced by both the lecture texts of Elizabeth Costello and the biography of Youth: Scenes from a Provincial Life. You can convincingly argue that an alienation from ones immediate surroundings is a pre-condition for novel writing itself. beginning with the often immediate financial needs of the first novelists of the 18th century, to the more aesthetic dissatisfaction of the high modernists, ranging from Proust to Joyce and carrying through to our own time.
But the fussy pre-occupations of Elizabeth Costello are those of a globe-trotting, internationally famous "lady novelist," and those looking for more immediate critiques of society, such as those contained in the meat of Coetzee's oeuvre, are likely to be disgruntled. Or at least, not gruntled.
Published 4/5/18
In the Forest (2002)
by Edna O'Brien
Edna O'Brien is still active- she released a novel in 2015. Her career as a novelist of note extends back to very first novel, Country Girls, published in 1960 and except for the 1980's, where she only published one novel in the entire decade, she has been good for about 3 or 4 books a decade ever since. As In the Forest can testify, she is still relevant, nothing dated about Edna O'Brien.
In the Forest is commonly called her "true crime" book, based on the real life exploits of the so-called kinderschreck, a disturbed young man who murdered three people in rural Ireland in the 1990's. The series of homicides is called the Cregg Wood murders, the perpetrator, Brendan O'Donnell, died in prison in 1996, I gather that the idea that an author would do this: base a book on recent true crime events, caused a minor furor in O'Brien's native Ireland- old hat for O'Brien who is likely the last Irish author to have her books burned in public for their supposed indecency.
Like other of O'Brien's catalog, it's not the subject per se which grabs you, but the execution. Articles about O'Brien often reference her friendship with Phillip Roth- who seems similar in terms of career longevity and ability to evoke controversy.
In the Forest (2002)
by Edna O'Brien
Edna O'Brien is still active- she released a novel in 2015. Her career as a novelist of note extends back to very first novel, Country Girls, published in 1960 and except for the 1980's, where she only published one novel in the entire decade, she has been good for about 3 or 4 books a decade ever since. As In the Forest can testify, she is still relevant, nothing dated about Edna O'Brien.
In the Forest is commonly called her "true crime" book, based on the real life exploits of the so-called kinderschreck, a disturbed young man who murdered three people in rural Ireland in the 1990's. The series of homicides is called the Cregg Wood murders, the perpetrator, Brendan O'Donnell, died in prison in 1996, I gather that the idea that an author would do this: base a book on recent true crime events, caused a minor furor in O'Brien's native Ireland- old hat for O'Brien who is likely the last Irish author to have her books burned in public for their supposed indecency.
Like other of O'Brien's catalog, it's not the subject per se which grabs you, but the execution. Articles about O'Brien often reference her friendship with Phillip Roth- who seems similar in terms of career longevity and ability to evoke controversy.
Published 4/5/18
The Book of Illusions (2002)
by Paul Auster
This was an audiobook narrated by the author himself. I'm surprised that doesn't happen more often. I wanted to quote this from the Wikipedia page about the book:
The Book of Illusions (2002)
by Paul Auster
This was an audiobook narrated by the author himself. I'm surprised that doesn't happen more often. I wanted to quote this from the Wikipedia page about the book:
The Book of Illusions revisits a number of plot elements seen in Auster's first major work, The New York Trilogy.I'm sure I'd recommend this audiobook edition, read by the author himself, over the print copy. Auster is one of the most over-represented authors in the original 1001 Books list- up there with Coetzee, like they just didn't have enough non-white men to fill up the end of the book, or they got lazy towards the end.
These include:
The protagonist driving himself into isolation
Extended focus on a character's (fictional) body of work
Writers as characters
A character disappearing, only to resurface years later, having spent some of the intervening years wandering and doing odd jobs
Parallels drawn between a work of Nathaniel Hawthorne and the plot itself
Notebooks (also in Oracle Night)
A meta-referential ending that places the protagonist as the author of the book itself
Published 4/12/18
The Light of Day (2003)
by Graham Swift
Curious that the editors of 1001 Books would omit Graham Swift's Booker Prize winning novel, Last Orders and include The Light of Day, which is a sort of detective novel by way of the tradition of English kitchen sink style realism, about an ex cop, who resigned in disgrace, being hired by a woman to investigate an affair between her husband and a Bosnian refugee who has been living in their post suburban home.
The plot is typical genre stuff, but the execution, both in terms of the non linear plot and the emphasis on the interior life of George the private investigator, makes The Light of Day a clearly literary rather than genre effort. Has Graham Swift really made it in the United States? Several of his books have been made into films, but not in a really big, Hollywood, way. He hasn't had any break through best selling books. His best books are experimental fiction. All signs point to no.
The Light of Day (2003)
by Graham Swift
Curious that the editors of 1001 Books would omit Graham Swift's Booker Prize winning novel, Last Orders and include The Light of Day, which is a sort of detective novel by way of the tradition of English kitchen sink style realism, about an ex cop, who resigned in disgrace, being hired by a woman to investigate an affair between her husband and a Bosnian refugee who has been living in their post suburban home.
The plot is typical genre stuff, but the execution, both in terms of the non linear plot and the emphasis on the interior life of George the private investigator, makes The Light of Day a clearly literary rather than genre effort. Has Graham Swift really made it in the United States? Several of his books have been made into films, but not in a really big, Hollywood, way. He hasn't had any break through best selling books. His best books are experimental fiction. All signs point to no.
Published 4/15/18
Thursbitch (2003)
by Alan Garner
Thursbitch, the 2003 novel by Scottish author Alan Garner is yet another fine example of the randomness that infects the last decade or so of selections for the first edition of the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die list. The title refers to a real-life valley Scotland. The book intertwines the story of a contemporary geologist and his companion, tromping through the Thursbitch of today and finding strange artifacts, which are likely connected to the other narrative stream- about Jack Turner, a "jagger" or driver of pony teams hauling salt out of the moorlands, living in the 18th century. Turner is the priest of a mysterious pre-Christian Celtic cult, centered around bull worship.
Both narrators address the reader mainly through conversation. There is little of the signaling or "neutral" description of place and emotion that a reader would expect. The impact is one of disorientation, as if, of course, the 18th century Celtic cult that of which Garner gives us brief glimpses. Thursbitch was the first title I've come across that was available only as an Ebook. Even though Thursbitch isn't lengthy, the difficult combination of Scotch 18th century dialogue and overall lack of signaling or explanation by the author made it a particularly poor choice as an Ebook. Thursbitch is the kind of book you want to read in print or not at all.
Thursbitch (2003)
by Alan Garner
Thursbitch, the 2003 novel by Scottish author Alan Garner is yet another fine example of the randomness that infects the last decade or so of selections for the first edition of the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die list. The title refers to a real-life valley Scotland. The book intertwines the story of a contemporary geologist and his companion, tromping through the Thursbitch of today and finding strange artifacts, which are likely connected to the other narrative stream- about Jack Turner, a "jagger" or driver of pony teams hauling salt out of the moorlands, living in the 18th century. Turner is the priest of a mysterious pre-Christian Celtic cult, centered around bull worship.
Both narrators address the reader mainly through conversation. There is little of the signaling or "neutral" description of place and emotion that a reader would expect. The impact is one of disorientation, as if, of course, the 18th century Celtic cult that of which Garner gives us brief glimpses. Thursbitch was the first title I've come across that was available only as an Ebook. Even though Thursbitch isn't lengthy, the difficult combination of Scotch 18th century dialogue and overall lack of signaling or explanation by the author made it a particularly poor choice as an Ebook. Thursbitch is the kind of book you want to read in print or not at all.
Published 4/16/18
What I Loved (2003)
by Siri Hustvedt
Another educated guess from the original editors of the 1001 Books edition from 2006. This is Siri Hustvedt's only appearance on the 1001 Books list. The boxes she ticks for inclusionary purposes are not strong: white, educated, American, artistic, cosmopolitan. In fact, her list of credentials seem more appropriate to a 19th century writer than one writing at the beginning of the 21st. The privilege meter does not go down when you add the not strictly relevant but still interesting fact that she is married to list super favorite Paul Auster, making them number one power couple of the 1001 Books list, unless J.M. Coetzee is partnered to someone on the list.
What I Loved reflects this background: The perspective of comfortable artists and academics living in pre-911 New York City. The friendship at the center of What I Loved is between an art history professor at Columbia University, and a hard-to-describe but succesful studio artist. Hustvedt doesn't neglect the early years entirely, but narrator Leo Hertzberg is a comfortable academic from start to finish, with nary a hint of privation that isn't self-inflicted.
The problems which consume Hertzberg and artist Bill Wechsler are stereotypical, cold women, messed up children, absence or presence of significant others. Much of the heart of the book involves Wechsler's son, Mark, who becomes an interesting case in the manifestation of mental illness as things grind to their (close to 500 pages later) conclusion. As an exercise in white privilege, it is an extraordinary book, perhaps a last gasp, or a companion piece to Auster's own considerable contribution. The decision of a woman writing a book from the perspective of a man shouldn't itself be particularly novel, but it is, particularly a book that looks so closely at issues of male personality and is basically centered around the troubles of being a father.
Judge from the principles of inclusion and diversity, Hustvedt is either an also ran or waiting for a chance to displace an Author like Joyce Carol Oates with a mid to late career masterpiece.
What I Loved (2003)
by Siri Hustvedt
Another educated guess from the original editors of the 1001 Books edition from 2006. This is Siri Hustvedt's only appearance on the 1001 Books list. The boxes she ticks for inclusionary purposes are not strong: white, educated, American, artistic, cosmopolitan. In fact, her list of credentials seem more appropriate to a 19th century writer than one writing at the beginning of the 21st. The privilege meter does not go down when you add the not strictly relevant but still interesting fact that she is married to list super favorite Paul Auster, making them number one power couple of the 1001 Books list, unless J.M. Coetzee is partnered to someone on the list.
What I Loved reflects this background: The perspective of comfortable artists and academics living in pre-911 New York City. The friendship at the center of What I Loved is between an art history professor at Columbia University, and a hard-to-describe but succesful studio artist. Hustvedt doesn't neglect the early years entirely, but narrator Leo Hertzberg is a comfortable academic from start to finish, with nary a hint of privation that isn't self-inflicted.
The problems which consume Hertzberg and artist Bill Wechsler are stereotypical, cold women, messed up children, absence or presence of significant others. Much of the heart of the book involves Wechsler's son, Mark, who becomes an interesting case in the manifestation of mental illness as things grind to their (close to 500 pages later) conclusion. As an exercise in white privilege, it is an extraordinary book, perhaps a last gasp, or a companion piece to Auster's own considerable contribution. The decision of a woman writing a book from the perspective of a man shouldn't itself be particularly novel, but it is, particularly a book that looks so closely at issues of male personality and is basically centered around the troubles of being a father.
Judge from the principles of inclusion and diversity, Hustvedt is either an also ran or waiting for a chance to displace an Author like Joyce Carol Oates with a mid to late career masterpiece.
Published 4/17/18
Kafka on the Shore (2002)
by Haruki Murakami
I would argue that a good principle for the 1001 Books project is that no single author should have more than 3 titles on the list. The theory being that no author has more than three great periods, and there is no need for one period to be represented by more than one title. Presumably, if you read the canonical title representing "Middle Murakami" you can go out and find the non canonical books on your own. For any author, the first period is either the "first novel" or "early work," typically shorter than the representative of the "middle" or "mature" period, where the works tend to be lengthier, more imaginative, recognized my major literary awards, etc. Finally there is the "late" work, something more experimental, or perhaps a work of non-fiction or a work more personal in nature than the early or middle representative work.
Under that schema, Kafka on the Shore would be the best representative of "Middle Murakami." It is not only ambitious in terms of length (650 pages) but it also represents a more in depth explorations of themes both fantastical and mundane from his earlier books. At the same time, Kafka on the Shore isn't that long- not compared to the 1000+ page 1Q84, which is probably the other strong contestant for the "Middle Murakami" pick. Murakami's success in translation has importance for what it tells us about his audience- which has a suspicious resemblance to what heavy users of the internet also appreciate, namely cats, Japanese culture and magical realism.
When I checked, the paperback edition of Kafka on the Shore was the second top selling product on his Amazon page, behind only the pre-sale for his forth coming book Killing Commendatore. He's published multiple titles, fiction and non-fiction since Kafka on the Shore was published in Japanese in 2002 (English 2005.)
I decided on the Audiobook version- generally speaking, the closer you get to the present, the more likely the major releases have a high quality Audiobook edition, and Kafka on the Shore qualifies. At 20 hours, it's a hefty commitment, but Murakami's translated prose sounds great read aloud, and nothing is so complicated that you might want to stop and look at the print. Listening to a Murakami audio book is like hearing someone tell you a story around a campfire.
Kafka on the Shore (2002)
by Haruki Murakami
I would argue that a good principle for the 1001 Books project is that no single author should have more than 3 titles on the list. The theory being that no author has more than three great periods, and there is no need for one period to be represented by more than one title. Presumably, if you read the canonical title representing "Middle Murakami" you can go out and find the non canonical books on your own. For any author, the first period is either the "first novel" or "early work," typically shorter than the representative of the "middle" or "mature" period, where the works tend to be lengthier, more imaginative, recognized my major literary awards, etc. Finally there is the "late" work, something more experimental, or perhaps a work of non-fiction or a work more personal in nature than the early or middle representative work.
Under that schema, Kafka on the Shore would be the best representative of "Middle Murakami." It is not only ambitious in terms of length (650 pages) but it also represents a more in depth explorations of themes both fantastical and mundane from his earlier books. At the same time, Kafka on the Shore isn't that long- not compared to the 1000+ page 1Q84, which is probably the other strong contestant for the "Middle Murakami" pick. Murakami's success in translation has importance for what it tells us about his audience- which has a suspicious resemblance to what heavy users of the internet also appreciate, namely cats, Japanese culture and magical realism.
When I checked, the paperback edition of Kafka on the Shore was the second top selling product on his Amazon page, behind only the pre-sale for his forth coming book Killing Commendatore. He's published multiple titles, fiction and non-fiction since Kafka on the Shore was published in Japanese in 2002 (English 2005.)
I decided on the Audiobook version- generally speaking, the closer you get to the present, the more likely the major releases have a high quality Audiobook edition, and Kafka on the Shore qualifies. At 20 hours, it's a hefty commitment, but Murakami's translated prose sounds great read aloud, and nothing is so complicated that you might want to stop and look at the print. Listening to a Murakami audio book is like hearing someone tell you a story around a campfire.
Published 4/23/18
The Corrections (2001)
by Jonathan Franzen
I've been consciously avoiding reading The Corrections since it was released in 2001. I was, at the time, a fan of his early novels, Twenty Seventh City, about an Indian-American mayor of St. Louis, and Strong Motion, but the hubbub over The Corrections (Oprah's Book Club, National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist) turned me off, as did the precis of the book about a dysfunctional Midwestern American family. Finally reading it 2018, it was everything, and more, that I thought it would be vis-a-vis the problems of privileged white folks in mid to late 20th century America.
Which is not to say that The Corrections doesn't have it moments, particularly in the portions that deal directly with the diminished capacity of the family patriarch and the struggles of his wife and three children to deal with it. I listened to the Audiobook version which I learned, only afterwards, was a, horrors, abridged version. Reflecting on the experience though, my horror lessened. Surely the abridgment was justified.
Franzen deserved his success, if only for the fact that he really does blaze new territory in the depiction of the onset of alzheimers/dementia, which I believe is a growth area for literary fiction. The problems of the children themselves range from unsympathetic to unbelievable, and the mother doesn't come off much better. Or maybe it all hits a little bit too close to home for his child of Jews who moved from St. Louis to San Francisco within the same general timeline of this book.
The Corrections (2001)
by Jonathan Franzen
I've been consciously avoiding reading The Corrections since it was released in 2001. I was, at the time, a fan of his early novels, Twenty Seventh City, about an Indian-American mayor of St. Louis, and Strong Motion, but the hubbub over The Corrections (Oprah's Book Club, National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist) turned me off, as did the precis of the book about a dysfunctional Midwestern American family. Finally reading it 2018, it was everything, and more, that I thought it would be vis-a-vis the problems of privileged white folks in mid to late 20th century America.
Which is not to say that The Corrections doesn't have it moments, particularly in the portions that deal directly with the diminished capacity of the family patriarch and the struggles of his wife and three children to deal with it. I listened to the Audiobook version which I learned, only afterwards, was a, horrors, abridged version. Reflecting on the experience though, my horror lessened. Surely the abridgment was justified.
Franzen deserved his success, if only for the fact that he really does blaze new territory in the depiction of the onset of alzheimers/dementia, which I believe is a growth area for literary fiction. The problems of the children themselves range from unsympathetic to unbelievable, and the mother doesn't come off much better. Or maybe it all hits a little bit too close to home for his child of Jews who moved from St. Louis to San Francisco within the same general timeline of this book.
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| The Otira Gorge road in New Zealand, location of some of the events of The Colour (before the road was built.) |
The Colour (2003)
by Rose Tremain
I love a work of historical fiction set in 19th century New Zealand. 19th century New Zealand was recently in literary headlines when The Luminaries, which shares locations with The Colour, won the Booker Prize in 2013 for it's 28 year old author, Elanor Catton. Specifically, the interesting event in 19th century New Zealand history is the gold rush, or Otago Gold Rush, which happened between 1861 and 1864. Both books also share similar elements drawn from the true-life melange of 19th century Gold Rush culture: English immigrants, Chinese immigrants, Maori and even a young catamite for good measure!
Tremain crams an impressive number of different perspectives into the 360 pages of The Colour. The events and outlook are almost unremittingly dark, though the conclusion lacks the cringe inducing behavior that peppers the rest of the book. Some of her characters are better drawn than others. The sub plot involving the Maori nanny of one of the settler children feels tacked on in the interest of political correctness, and ultimately, I think it's the setting that merited the inclusion into the first 1001 Books list. Surely it would be replaced by Booker winner The Luminaries if you were to make a list through 2013.
Published 5/1/18
House of Leaves (2000)
by Mark Danielewski
Like Donnie Darko or Infinite Jest, House of Leaves is a love it or hate it proposition, an 800+ page book containing a half dozen different narrative voices, typefaces, page layouts and the most footnotes in a novel I've ever seen outside of the aforementioned Infinite Jest, which, now that I think about it, used end-notes, not footnotes. The two major narratives in House of Leaves are about a purported documentary film about a house that contains infinite space inside of it AND a story, told in the footnotes, of a late 20th century LA hipster type who discovers the manuscript about the documentary film in the bedsit of a Bukoswski like deceased hobo.
I was astonished- astonished- to learn for the first time of this book via the 1001 Books project. Not because I particularly liked it or anything like that, but just that it very much seems like something someone I know would have read or told me about. It may be simply that it was published at a time- I was in law school in 2001- when I wasn't really tracking on new books. The copy I read- a 2nd edition, is the cleaned up, big budget version that includes not only the novel but a companion piece, called The Whalestoe Letters, which are letters written by the institutionalized mother of the LA hipster type who authors one of the two major narratives in the book.
At times, the "infinite house" at the center of House of Leaves, and the explorations within, seem to comment on the eccentricities of post-modern criticism: People wandering around in an infinite darkness, unable to derive any specific meaning from their experience. Such postmodern fuckery was hardly novel in 2000, when House of Leaves was published, but Danielewski brings a certain counter-cultural swagger that obviously appealed to the readers who made it such a cult hit.
House of Leaves (2000)
by Mark Danielewski
Like Donnie Darko or Infinite Jest, House of Leaves is a love it or hate it proposition, an 800+ page book containing a half dozen different narrative voices, typefaces, page layouts and the most footnotes in a novel I've ever seen outside of the aforementioned Infinite Jest, which, now that I think about it, used end-notes, not footnotes. The two major narratives in House of Leaves are about a purported documentary film about a house that contains infinite space inside of it AND a story, told in the footnotes, of a late 20th century LA hipster type who discovers the manuscript about the documentary film in the bedsit of a Bukoswski like deceased hobo.
I was astonished- astonished- to learn for the first time of this book via the 1001 Books project. Not because I particularly liked it or anything like that, but just that it very much seems like something someone I know would have read or told me about. It may be simply that it was published at a time- I was in law school in 2001- when I wasn't really tracking on new books. The copy I read- a 2nd edition, is the cleaned up, big budget version that includes not only the novel but a companion piece, called The Whalestoe Letters, which are letters written by the institutionalized mother of the LA hipster type who authors one of the two major narratives in the book.
At times, the "infinite house" at the center of House of Leaves, and the explorations within, seem to comment on the eccentricities of post-modern criticism: People wandering around in an infinite darkness, unable to derive any specific meaning from their experience. Such postmodern fuckery was hardly novel in 2000, when House of Leaves was published, but Danielewski brings a certain counter-cultural swagger that obviously appealed to the readers who made it such a cult hit.
Published 5/17/18
Drop City (2003)
by T.C. Boyle
Here's a classic random late list selection from the original edition of the 1001 Books list. Drop City is a middle o f the pack work from a not-quite-elite author. I mean T.C. Boyle is cool, I guess, but I wasn't feeling this tale about a group of hippies living in a commune in far Northern California called "Drop City." The fictional Drop City is not to be confused with the real Drop City, which was a highly influential early commune in Colorado. The inhabitants of Drop City are a largely unsympathetic bunch, even by the low standards of counter-cultural types in contemporary literary fiction. After a crisis with the local authorities forces them from their land, some of them decide to relocate to the wilds north of Fairbanks, Alaska, where a recently retired cabin dweller has gifted his land and cabin to the found of Drop City.
More interesting are the inhabitants of rural Alaska the commune dwellers encounter, led by Sess Harder, who is the most vital voice among the various narrators. Sess is wooing a woman named Pamela, who has taken out an ad in the local paper looking for a husband. Once the hippies arrive in Alaska, their terrible timing, arriving just before the onset of the unbelievably brutal Alaskan winter, becomes clear and the third act unspools like a horror movie with Alaskan winter as the monster.
Inevitably, I see Boyle identified as a comic author, and I personally pride myself on possessing and being able to recognize sophisticated dark humor, but calling Drop City in any way funny is a stretch. Perhaps calling it satire makes it easier to digest Boyle's lack of empathy for his characters. Boyle is nothing if not acerbic, but Drop City didn't do much for me vs reading an account like The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, already accomplished.
In 2018, the most interesting connection in Drop City is the link between the end of the commune era and the rise of the frontier/Alaska culture, which has only gotten bigger since 2003. That world now includes a half dozen long running reality shows and one Vice Presidential candidate. You could argue that the frontier cabin culture is the obverse of the 1960's counter culture- the right wing version of the left wing hippie world.
Drop City (2003)
by T.C. Boyle
Here's a classic random late list selection from the original edition of the 1001 Books list. Drop City is a middle o f the pack work from a not-quite-elite author. I mean T.C. Boyle is cool, I guess, but I wasn't feeling this tale about a group of hippies living in a commune in far Northern California called "Drop City." The fictional Drop City is not to be confused with the real Drop City, which was a highly influential early commune in Colorado. The inhabitants of Drop City are a largely unsympathetic bunch, even by the low standards of counter-cultural types in contemporary literary fiction. After a crisis with the local authorities forces them from their land, some of them decide to relocate to the wilds north of Fairbanks, Alaska, where a recently retired cabin dweller has gifted his land and cabin to the found of Drop City.
More interesting are the inhabitants of rural Alaska the commune dwellers encounter, led by Sess Harder, who is the most vital voice among the various narrators. Sess is wooing a woman named Pamela, who has taken out an ad in the local paper looking for a husband. Once the hippies arrive in Alaska, their terrible timing, arriving just before the onset of the unbelievably brutal Alaskan winter, becomes clear and the third act unspools like a horror movie with Alaskan winter as the monster.
Inevitably, I see Boyle identified as a comic author, and I personally pride myself on possessing and being able to recognize sophisticated dark humor, but calling Drop City in any way funny is a stretch. Perhaps calling it satire makes it easier to digest Boyle's lack of empathy for his characters. Boyle is nothing if not acerbic, but Drop City didn't do much for me vs reading an account like The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, already accomplished.
In 2018, the most interesting connection in Drop City is the link between the end of the commune era and the rise of the frontier/Alaska culture, which has only gotten bigger since 2003. That world now includes a half dozen long running reality shows and one Vice Presidential candidate. You could argue that the frontier cabin culture is the obverse of the 1960's counter culture- the right wing version of the left wing hippie world.
Published 5/17/18
Family Matters (2002)
by Rohinton Mistry
I wonder what Parsi-Canadian author Rohinton Mistry has been doing since Family Matters was published in 2002. He hasn't published a novel since then, and a quick Google search barely turns up any internet era news. Both Family Matters and A Fine Balance tell the stories of multi-generational families living in Bombay/Mumbai in the 20th century, but Family Matters is the book that most closely mirrors Mistry's family background as followers of Zoroastrianism living in India after leaving Iran/Persia after Islam deposed the Zoroastrian monarchy there. Zoroastrianism generally gets credit for being the first Monotheistic religion, and if you dig hard enough you can find that it directly influenced the development of Judaism, since Jews intellectuals were living in Persia for centuries prior to the crystallization of the old testament.
Zoroastrianism plays a background role in Family Matters- all the characters come from that faith, and adherence to its tenets, including a strict prohibition on intermarriage, play a big role in the plot, but other than those two observations there isn't a whole lot to distinguish Family Matters from the Hindu family of A Fine Balance. Like all books set in present day India, the mere day to day experience of living, even as a member of the educated elite class comes as a shock to any western reader.
The struggle to maintain cleanliness, central to the Hindu faith and Indian civilization as a whole, can only be understood in terms of just how lacking the large cities of India lack it. Here, the family patriarch, retired professor of Western Literature Nariman, experience a crisis when he breaks his ankle- already suffering from Parkinson's disease. Initially living with his two middle aged stepchildren, he is shunted to his daughter, who lives in an apartment he purchased for her with her husband, a sales man at a local sporting goods store.
The day to day struggle of caring for Nariman consumes most of Family Matters. What exists outside of that thread of plot resembles plot points from A Fine Balance, specifically the temptation and peril of corruption in a culture where avoiding it is impossible. Mistry extends this familial struggle down to the children in Family Matters- no one is spared.
It says something that Family Matters is almost lighthearted compared to A Fine Balance, which, after all, is mostly about the lifetime consequences of incest perpetrated by a father against his daughter. Compared to that, cleaning up the diarrhea of a 75 year old man being forced to live in the hallway of his daughter's two bedroom apartment is a walk in the park.
Family Matters (2002)
by Rohinton Mistry
I wonder what Parsi-Canadian author Rohinton Mistry has been doing since Family Matters was published in 2002. He hasn't published a novel since then, and a quick Google search barely turns up any internet era news. Both Family Matters and A Fine Balance tell the stories of multi-generational families living in Bombay/Mumbai in the 20th century, but Family Matters is the book that most closely mirrors Mistry's family background as followers of Zoroastrianism living in India after leaving Iran/Persia after Islam deposed the Zoroastrian monarchy there. Zoroastrianism generally gets credit for being the first Monotheistic religion, and if you dig hard enough you can find that it directly influenced the development of Judaism, since Jews intellectuals were living in Persia for centuries prior to the crystallization of the old testament.
Zoroastrianism plays a background role in Family Matters- all the characters come from that faith, and adherence to its tenets, including a strict prohibition on intermarriage, play a big role in the plot, but other than those two observations there isn't a whole lot to distinguish Family Matters from the Hindu family of A Fine Balance. Like all books set in present day India, the mere day to day experience of living, even as a member of the educated elite class comes as a shock to any western reader.
The struggle to maintain cleanliness, central to the Hindu faith and Indian civilization as a whole, can only be understood in terms of just how lacking the large cities of India lack it. Here, the family patriarch, retired professor of Western Literature Nariman, experience a crisis when he breaks his ankle- already suffering from Parkinson's disease. Initially living with his two middle aged stepchildren, he is shunted to his daughter, who lives in an apartment he purchased for her with her husband, a sales man at a local sporting goods store.
The day to day struggle of caring for Nariman consumes most of Family Matters. What exists outside of that thread of plot resembles plot points from A Fine Balance, specifically the temptation and peril of corruption in a culture where avoiding it is impossible. Mistry extends this familial struggle down to the children in Family Matters- no one is spared.
It says something that Family Matters is almost lighthearted compared to A Fine Balance, which, after all, is mostly about the lifetime consequences of incest perpetrated by a father against his daughter. Compared to that, cleaning up the diarrhea of a 75 year old man being forced to live in the hallway of his daughter's two bedroom apartment is a walk in the park.
Published 5/30/18
Unless (2002)
by Carol Shields
I'm beginning to get a little uneasy about completing the 1001 Books project, or at least the 2006 original edition. According to the post counter I'm still over a hundred books short, and it is unclear where those last 100 titles are going to come from. There are half dozen from the pre 1700's period. Under five titles from the period between 1700 and 1900. There are maybe 30-40 title max left in the 20th century and perhaps a half dozen left from 2000-2007. That leaves a 50 title gap. I'm troubled.
Stone died of breast cancer in 2003. Unless was were last published novel, and it largely reads like a defense of Shield's own success as a writer of "domestic" fiction. Reta Winters, her narrator, is a 44 year old writer, of work which sounds similar to what Shields herself produced, living comfortably in suburban Canada with her Doctor husband and three children. Her life is cast into (relative) chaos when the oldest of her daughters suddenly drops out of college to become a full time beggar on the streets of Toronto.
Winters is, to say the least, puzzled by this decision, and most of Unless consists of Winters seeking understanding while going about her day-to-day business with friends and family. I've become reasonably enthusiastic about Shields and writers like Shields directly because of the 1001 Books project. There is simply no way I would have delved into this vibrant contemporary world of "domestic literature" without the impetus of the project.
Unless (2002)
by Carol Shields
I'm beginning to get a little uneasy about completing the 1001 Books project, or at least the 2006 original edition. According to the post counter I'm still over a hundred books short, and it is unclear where those last 100 titles are going to come from. There are half dozen from the pre 1700's period. Under five titles from the period between 1700 and 1900. There are maybe 30-40 title max left in the 20th century and perhaps a half dozen left from 2000-2007. That leaves a 50 title gap. I'm troubled.
Stone died of breast cancer in 2003. Unless was were last published novel, and it largely reads like a defense of Shield's own success as a writer of "domestic" fiction. Reta Winters, her narrator, is a 44 year old writer, of work which sounds similar to what Shields herself produced, living comfortably in suburban Canada with her Doctor husband and three children. Her life is cast into (relative) chaos when the oldest of her daughters suddenly drops out of college to become a full time beggar on the streets of Toronto.
Winters is, to say the least, puzzled by this decision, and most of Unless consists of Winters seeking understanding while going about her day-to-day business with friends and family. I've become reasonably enthusiastic about Shields and writers like Shields directly because of the 1001 Books project. There is simply no way I would have delved into this vibrant contemporary world of "domestic literature" without the impetus of the project.
Published 6/6/18
Nowhere Man (2002)
by Aleksandar Hemon
I believe Aleksandar Hemon is the type of writer you would call a "writer's writer." I.E.: critically beloved, but lacking the kind of break-out popular hit that often separates canon members from also rans in the 20th and 21st century. A Bosnian immigrant who learned English as an adult, Hemon is frequently compared to Conrad (mmm,,maybe.) and Nabokov (closer). The constants in his oeuvre are immigrant characters from the ex-Yugoslavia, an obsession with the impact of those wars on said characters, and a clever way with the English language- setting him apart from many native born writers.
In Nowhere Man, apparently named after the Beatles tune, Josef Pronek- a character from his earlier short story, Blind Josef Pronek and Dead Souls, gets his own novel. The three segments of Nowhere Man deal with three separate periods in Pronek's life: The first is his childhood in pre-war Sarajevo, the second, his student days in the Ukraine and the third, his present as a low paid solicitor for Greenpeace. Nowhere Man ends with a digression into the life of Russian army officer and his life in Shanghai.
Hemon's personal back story fairly cries out for something more Conradian- an exploration of the darkness of southeast Europe, perhaps. Two books into his catalog, my only observation is that he is largely engaged with the minutiae of day-to-day existence, and the struggles of characters on the periphery of society. Call it the immigrant experience.
Nowhere Man (2002)
by Aleksandar Hemon
I believe Aleksandar Hemon is the type of writer you would call a "writer's writer." I.E.: critically beloved, but lacking the kind of break-out popular hit that often separates canon members from also rans in the 20th and 21st century. A Bosnian immigrant who learned English as an adult, Hemon is frequently compared to Conrad (mmm,,maybe.) and Nabokov (closer). The constants in his oeuvre are immigrant characters from the ex-Yugoslavia, an obsession with the impact of those wars on said characters, and a clever way with the English language- setting him apart from many native born writers.
In Nowhere Man, apparently named after the Beatles tune, Josef Pronek- a character from his earlier short story, Blind Josef Pronek and Dead Souls, gets his own novel. The three segments of Nowhere Man deal with three separate periods in Pronek's life: The first is his childhood in pre-war Sarajevo, the second, his student days in the Ukraine and the third, his present as a low paid solicitor for Greenpeace. Nowhere Man ends with a digression into the life of Russian army officer and his life in Shanghai.
Hemon's personal back story fairly cries out for something more Conradian- an exploration of the darkness of southeast Europe, perhaps. Two books into his catalog, my only observation is that he is largely engaged with the minutiae of day-to-day existence, and the struggles of characters on the periphery of society. Call it the immigrant experience.
Published 6/14/18
Middlesex (2002)
by Jeffrey Eugenides
I bought a hard back copy of Middlesex when it was published in 2002. I promptly left it sitting on a shelf for the next 15 years. I just couldn't face the multi-generational story of an American immigrant family, narrated by an intersex hermaphrodite, and written by a white male. Now I don't know where my hard copy is, so I listened to the Audiobook. Clocking in at 20 hours plus, Middlesex isn't exactly a fun listen, but at least it's not a forty hour book written in the 19th century. Eugenides is, by all accounts, a clever writer, and Middlesex was an enormous hit- selling over four million copies world wide according to the well-maintained Wikipedia page.
Even allowing for the novelty of an intersex narrator, the form of Middlesex seems as dated as a serial written by Charles Dickens in 1858. Perhaps it's the introduction of the novel intersex narrator, paired with the traditional multi-generational narrative, that explains the wide popular audience for the written book. Eugenides also makes use of the clever narrative trick, first used by Laurence Sterne in Tristram Shandy, wherein the narrator narrates his own birth- in this case-starting the action with the narrator's grandparents/siblings in Greek populated Asia minor. This allows him to expand the action beyond the inner city and suburbs of Detroit, to encompass some actual 20th century action. Alas, after an encounter between the narrators grandmother and a Nascent Nation of Islam, the rest of Middlesex settles down into a more or less conventional LGBT coming-of-age tale. It's nice for the intersex to have a voice, but I'd prefer an actual intersex author.
Middlesex (2002)
by Jeffrey Eugenides
I bought a hard back copy of Middlesex when it was published in 2002. I promptly left it sitting on a shelf for the next 15 years. I just couldn't face the multi-generational story of an American immigrant family, narrated by an intersex hermaphrodite, and written by a white male. Now I don't know where my hard copy is, so I listened to the Audiobook. Clocking in at 20 hours plus, Middlesex isn't exactly a fun listen, but at least it's not a forty hour book written in the 19th century. Eugenides is, by all accounts, a clever writer, and Middlesex was an enormous hit- selling over four million copies world wide according to the well-maintained Wikipedia page.
Even allowing for the novelty of an intersex narrator, the form of Middlesex seems as dated as a serial written by Charles Dickens in 1858. Perhaps it's the introduction of the novel intersex narrator, paired with the traditional multi-generational narrative, that explains the wide popular audience for the written book. Eugenides also makes use of the clever narrative trick, first used by Laurence Sterne in Tristram Shandy, wherein the narrator narrates his own birth- in this case-starting the action with the narrator's grandparents/siblings in Greek populated Asia minor. This allows him to expand the action beyond the inner city and suburbs of Detroit, to encompass some actual 20th century action. Alas, after an encounter between the narrators grandmother and a Nascent Nation of Islam, the rest of Middlesex settles down into a more or less conventional LGBT coming-of-age tale. It's nice for the intersex to have a voice, but I'd prefer an actual intersex author.
Published 9/10/18
Dead Air (2002)
by Iain Banks
No surprise that Dead Air was cut from the first revision of the 1001 Books list. Banks, a Scottish author who straddled the upper echelons of genre science fiction and middle echelons of literary fiction, landed four books in the original 1001 Books list- a very British decision- many of his books didn't even get published in the United States, including this one, which I had to buy- an English edition- from Amazon, because the library doesn't have a a copy. When the Los Angeles Public Library doesn't have a copy, it is hard to argue that a book is canon level material.
In fact, I can't really come up for a justification for the inclusion of Dead Air, a fairly mundane comic-thriller about a left-liberal Scottish shock jock living in London in the aftermath of 9/11. He becomes entangled with a mobster's wife, complications ensue, etc. Dead Air keeps company with contemporaries like Will Self, Martin Amis and Ian MacEwan. In 2006, perhaps there was an argument that Dead Air was worthy of making the cut, but once you include all the hundreds of excluded books from places like Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America, shock jock Ken Nott doesn't seem worthy of inclusion.
Dead Air (2002)
by Iain Banks
No surprise that Dead Air was cut from the first revision of the 1001 Books list. Banks, a Scottish author who straddled the upper echelons of genre science fiction and middle echelons of literary fiction, landed four books in the original 1001 Books list- a very British decision- many of his books didn't even get published in the United States, including this one, which I had to buy- an English edition- from Amazon, because the library doesn't have a a copy. When the Los Angeles Public Library doesn't have a copy, it is hard to argue that a book is canon level material.
In fact, I can't really come up for a justification for the inclusion of Dead Air, a fairly mundane comic-thriller about a left-liberal Scottish shock jock living in London in the aftermath of 9/11. He becomes entangled with a mobster's wife, complications ensue, etc. Dead Air keeps company with contemporaries like Will Self, Martin Amis and Ian MacEwan. In 2006, perhaps there was an argument that Dead Air was worthy of making the cut, but once you include all the hundreds of excluded books from places like Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America, shock jock Ken Nott doesn't seem worthy of inclusion.
Published 10/1/18
S: A Novel About the Balkans (2001)
by Slavenka Drakulic
S: A Novel About the Balkans was published as As If I Am Not There in the UK, and it is under that name that it made the first edition of 1001 Books. If you are looking for a book detailing the experience of non-Serbians in Serbian run death camps during the Bosnian you need look know further.
S, the narrator, is giving birth to her camp-rape baby in a hospital in Stockholm, where she is a refugee/immigrant. From her bed, she recalls her experiences, beginning when she is cleansed out a Bosnian mountain village, where she has temporarily located from her life in Sarajevo, spelling a teacher out on maternity leave. S. is the child of a Bosnian-muslim father and a Bosnian-Croatian mother, but all that really matters for the purposes of the Serbian militia is that she is not Serbian.
S: A Novel About the Balkans (2001)
by Slavenka Drakulic
S: A Novel About the Balkans was published as As If I Am Not There in the UK, and it is under that name that it made the first edition of 1001 Books. If you are looking for a book detailing the experience of non-Serbians in Serbian run death camps during the Bosnian you need look know further.
S, the narrator, is giving birth to her camp-rape baby in a hospital in Stockholm, where she is a refugee/immigrant. From her bed, she recalls her experiences, beginning when she is cleansed out a Bosnian mountain village, where she has temporarily located from her life in Sarajevo, spelling a teacher out on maternity leave. S. is the child of a Bosnian-muslim father and a Bosnian-Croatian mother, but all that really matters for the purposes of the Serbian militia is that she is not Serbian.
Published 10/22/18
Everything is Illuminated (2002)
by Johnathan Safrsn Foer
It's hard for me to say that I vastly disliked Everything is Illuminated, a novel written by an author with a similar date of birth, ethnicity and social class as myself, and by transitive property the closest I'll ever come to seeing my own perspective in the canon, but there you have it. I really didn't like Everything is Illuminated, a combination Holocaust memoir and imaginative (some might even say whimsical) work of literary fiction. There can be no doubting that the whimsical element of the book, including a co-narrator from the Ukraine who speaks a slightly daft version of English (and writes the same way, amazingly enough!), helped this book obtain that rare combination of critical applause and measurable sales, but I thought it out of step with the central event of the book: The massacre of thousands of Jews at the hands of Ukrainian auxiliary forces during the opening days of World War II on the Eastern front.
This event, known for the place where it took place, Trochenbrod, is known in the fictional version as Trachimbrod. The historical significance of Trochenbrod/Trachimbrod is that it was a massacre perpetrated not by Nazi soldiers themselves, but by their Ukrainian auxiliary troops. This phenomenon is well detailed in The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell, another recent fictional take on the events of World War II, where the eagerness of Ukrainian auxiliary troops to massacre their former neighbors often eclipses that of the more cosmopolitan SS officers. It's worth noting that the eagerness of locals to participate in the Holocaust varied vastly in different Nazi organized territories. The areas that are now Poland and the Ukraine were at the high water mark of local collaboration, and generally cooperation lessened as you moved West and South from there.
No doubt too that part of the success of Everything is Illuminated is the integration of the contemporary American Jewish perspective with that of contemporary Ukrainians, though the Wikipedia entry notes that some Ukrainians take issue with the "facts" of the massacre in Everything is Illuminated, presumably in defense of said Ukrainian participants. The irony of the historical fate of the Jews of the shetls of now-Poland and Ukraine lies in a fact that is often repeated in works of fiction and non fiction, that Jews of the area actually fled towards the Nazi's, and initially viewed the "honorable" Germans as a source of protection against the local populations, thirsty for revenge against a population that was perceived as favored by the Russian Communist government.
I suppose the other achievement of Everything is Illuminated is that he packs a heavy narrative theme and literary inventiveness into a book which clocks in at under 300 pages, meaning, essentially, that it is suitable for sale in airport bookshops, and would intimidate no one.
Everything is Illuminated (2002)
by Johnathan Safrsn Foer
It's hard for me to say that I vastly disliked Everything is Illuminated, a novel written by an author with a similar date of birth, ethnicity and social class as myself, and by transitive property the closest I'll ever come to seeing my own perspective in the canon, but there you have it. I really didn't like Everything is Illuminated, a combination Holocaust memoir and imaginative (some might even say whimsical) work of literary fiction. There can be no doubting that the whimsical element of the book, including a co-narrator from the Ukraine who speaks a slightly daft version of English (and writes the same way, amazingly enough!), helped this book obtain that rare combination of critical applause and measurable sales, but I thought it out of step with the central event of the book: The massacre of thousands of Jews at the hands of Ukrainian auxiliary forces during the opening days of World War II on the Eastern front.
This event, known for the place where it took place, Trochenbrod, is known in the fictional version as Trachimbrod. The historical significance of Trochenbrod/Trachimbrod is that it was a massacre perpetrated not by Nazi soldiers themselves, but by their Ukrainian auxiliary troops. This phenomenon is well detailed in The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell, another recent fictional take on the events of World War II, where the eagerness of Ukrainian auxiliary troops to massacre their former neighbors often eclipses that of the more cosmopolitan SS officers. It's worth noting that the eagerness of locals to participate in the Holocaust varied vastly in different Nazi organized territories. The areas that are now Poland and the Ukraine were at the high water mark of local collaboration, and generally cooperation lessened as you moved West and South from there.
No doubt too that part of the success of Everything is Illuminated is the integration of the contemporary American Jewish perspective with that of contemporary Ukrainians, though the Wikipedia entry notes that some Ukrainians take issue with the "facts" of the massacre in Everything is Illuminated, presumably in defense of said Ukrainian participants. The irony of the historical fate of the Jews of the shetls of now-Poland and Ukraine lies in a fact that is often repeated in works of fiction and non fiction, that Jews of the area actually fled towards the Nazi's, and initially viewed the "honorable" Germans as a source of protection against the local populations, thirsty for revenge against a population that was perceived as favored by the Russian Communist government.
I suppose the other achievement of Everything is Illuminated is that he packs a heavy narrative theme and literary inventiveness into a book which clocks in at under 300 pages, meaning, essentially, that it is suitable for sale in airport bookshops, and would intimidate no one.
Published 10/23/18
The Successor (2003)
by Ismail Kadare
Replaces: In the Forest by Edna O'Brien (Reviewed April 2018)
I like reading the novels of Albanian writer Ismail Kadare, and gaining the experience of writers like him- often twice translated, first from Albanian to French and then French to English, is precisely the benefit of a reading program like the 1001 Books list. Kadare occupies that tier of international author that sits just below the Nobel Prize Winners. He won the first Man Booker International Prize, when it was simply awarded to an author a la the Nobel (it is now awarded to a specific book). He's won the Jerusalem Prize, which overlaps Nobel winners and shortlisters alike. He doesn't have a huge English language audience, and to the extent that he does, it is located in England, where a "big in France" pedigree takes you a lot further than it takes you in the United States.
Kadare presents a uniquely Albanian viewpoint, while still writing within the mainstream of early 21st century literary fiction. Unlike his other 1001 Books list titles, The Successor deals with a real story: the unexplained murder of Mehmet Shehu, long time second in command to even longer time Communist dictator Enver Hoxha. Shehu died in a mysterious "suicide" after the famous split between Albania and Communist Russia. Kadare teases out various conspiracy theories in a fashion that should be familiar to readers of 20th century fiction. At times, I caught myself thinking that I was reading a Mario Llosa Vargas novel about a fictional South American country.
It is unclear to me why the 1001 Books list would pick The Successor, which is the second book in a two book series about Shehu and his family, and omit the other book, Agamemnon's Daughter. Even more unclear when you consider that Kadare has about 20 novels in English translation. The book it replaces, In the Forest by Irish author Edna O'Brien, is similar thematically speaking because both books deal elliptically with a murder.
The Successor (2003)
by Ismail Kadare
Replaces: In the Forest by Edna O'Brien (Reviewed April 2018)
I like reading the novels of Albanian writer Ismail Kadare, and gaining the experience of writers like him- often twice translated, first from Albanian to French and then French to English, is precisely the benefit of a reading program like the 1001 Books list. Kadare occupies that tier of international author that sits just below the Nobel Prize Winners. He won the first Man Booker International Prize, when it was simply awarded to an author a la the Nobel (it is now awarded to a specific book). He's won the Jerusalem Prize, which overlaps Nobel winners and shortlisters alike. He doesn't have a huge English language audience, and to the extent that he does, it is located in England, where a "big in France" pedigree takes you a lot further than it takes you in the United States.
Kadare presents a uniquely Albanian viewpoint, while still writing within the mainstream of early 21st century literary fiction. Unlike his other 1001 Books list titles, The Successor deals with a real story: the unexplained murder of Mehmet Shehu, long time second in command to even longer time Communist dictator Enver Hoxha. Shehu died in a mysterious "suicide" after the famous split between Albania and Communist Russia. Kadare teases out various conspiracy theories in a fashion that should be familiar to readers of 20th century fiction. At times, I caught myself thinking that I was reading a Mario Llosa Vargas novel about a fictional South American country.
It is unclear to me why the 1001 Books list would pick The Successor, which is the second book in a two book series about Shehu and his family, and omit the other book, Agamemnon's Daughter. Even more unclear when you consider that Kadare has about 20 novels in English translation. The book it replaces, In the Forest by Irish author Edna O'Brien, is similar thematically speaking because both books deal elliptically with a murder.
Published 10/29/18
London Orbital (2002)
by Iain Sinclair
Psychogeography is the last literary trend that made it into the pages of the first 1001 Books edition, published in 2006. Other books from this period fall into different categories: the sprawling, multi plot historical epic, the anodyne international best seller and the immigrant bildungsroman are three that seemingly dominate the period between 1996 and 2006 in the first edition of the 1001 Books list. Psychogeography, on the other hand, is a genuinely novel literary genre, equal parts situationist influence post-modern theory and a refraction of "the world around us," psychogeography grasps for universal truths at the same time it focuses on increasingly discrete areas in the real world.
Here, the focus is the M25, a "ring road" that surrounds the greater London metropolis. As one might well imagine from reading that sentence, the m25 is not a particularly beautiful place, quite the opposite- it is a giant, concrete ring road which encircles London. Sinclair, along with companions, vigorously walks the route, and at each turn, introduces another writer whose work was influenced by the M25 and environs. Notably, J.G. Ballard, but many others that a fan of 20th century literature will recognize. There is no plot, other than the completion of the walk itself. There is little to no character development, with the narrator closely resembling the author. Much of London Orbital consists of densely woven quotations from other authors about the sights of the London Orbital.
It should come as no surprise that there is limited interest in London Orbital outside of England itself. At the same time, it is the single most ambitious book to which a reader can apply the psychogeography title and it earns a place in the canon on that basis.
London Orbital (2002)
by Iain Sinclair
Psychogeography is the last literary trend that made it into the pages of the first 1001 Books edition, published in 2006. Other books from this period fall into different categories: the sprawling, multi plot historical epic, the anodyne international best seller and the immigrant bildungsroman are three that seemingly dominate the period between 1996 and 2006 in the first edition of the 1001 Books list. Psychogeography, on the other hand, is a genuinely novel literary genre, equal parts situationist influence post-modern theory and a refraction of "the world around us," psychogeography grasps for universal truths at the same time it focuses on increasingly discrete areas in the real world.
Here, the focus is the M25, a "ring road" that surrounds the greater London metropolis. As one might well imagine from reading that sentence, the m25 is not a particularly beautiful place, quite the opposite- it is a giant, concrete ring road which encircles London. Sinclair, along with companions, vigorously walks the route, and at each turn, introduces another writer whose work was influenced by the M25 and environs. Notably, J.G. Ballard, but many others that a fan of 20th century literature will recognize. There is no plot, other than the completion of the walk itself. There is little to no character development, with the narrator closely resembling the author. Much of London Orbital consists of densely woven quotations from other authors about the sights of the London Orbital.
It should come as no surprise that there is limited interest in London Orbital outside of England itself. At the same time, it is the single most ambitious book to which a reader can apply the psychogeography title and it earns a place in the canon on that basis.
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| Kal Penn played Nikil, the central narrator in the Mira Nair directed movie version of The Namesake, the 2003 novel written by Jhumba Lahiri. |
The Namesake (2003)
by Jhumba Lahiri
Replaces: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (Reviewed June 2018)
The Namesake was a break-out hit for Bengali-American writer Jhumba Lahiri, and it followed her debut collection of short-stories, Interpreter of Maladies, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1999. Her next novel, The Lowland, published in 2013, made the shortlist for both the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Award, which I think was unheard of for an author based out of the United States in 2013. In other words, Lahiri has demonstrated that she is an author who pleases both critics and audiences alike. Her perspective, that of the child of Bengali-Indian immigrants raised in the Boston area, is different enough to evoke interest, but similar enough to the experience of the type of white Americans who read literary fiction to not raise any hackles.
Similarly, the style of the novel, which combines aspects of the bildungsroman with the multi-generational immigrant family story, seems both familiar yet different enough to prevent boredom. Lahiri skillfully deploys multiple narrators while largely relying on Gogol, the male child of the immigrant couple of Ashoke and Ashima, to be the "main" narrator. Like many immigrant family narratives, the immigrant parents come across as borderline super human and heroic, while the children seem more like disappointments. Gogol fits this pattern, excelling reasonably well in his schooling, but rejecting his parents and the life they have built in a way that seems callous, if understandable.
The ambivalent relationship between the immigrant parents and the fully American children is captured by the title and central metaphor of the book: Gogol is named after the Russian author Nikolai Gogol, an inspirational figure for his father, but spends basically the entire book complaining about it, ultimately changing it to Nikhil. Nikhil was played by Kal Penn in the Mira Nair directed movie version, and I was actually thinking of Penn even though I didn't know he played Nikhil in the movie.
I wasn't sad to see Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides get the boot. I wasn't sold on Middlesex- the first edition hardback sat unread on my shelf for a decade, and it is still unread, since I listened to an Audiobook version. I also picked the Audiobook version for The Namesake, mostly because it was immediately available but also because I wanted to hear the voices of the characters. I do recommend the Audiobook.
Published 12/11/18
Vernon God Little(2003)
by DBC Pierre
Replaces Shroud by John Banville (Reviewed March 2018)
I could take or leave either of these books. Vernon God Little, written by Australian writer DBC Pierre, is what I found to be a risible "satire" about a near illiterate teen, living on the Texas border, who is accused of aiding and abetting his friend in a high school shooting massacre. Amazingly, Vernon God Little actually won the Booker Prize in 2003, and it seems to me the strongest argument in favor of doing what they actually ended up doing: Opening up the competition to American authors. After all, if you can give the award to an Australian who writes a book about Texas, you can give the award to a Texas who writes about Texas.
Almost more amazingly, Vernon God Little was Pierre's first published novel, and I think you can see the trajectory of his career in his Wikipedia page: A prize winning first novel from 2003, a follow-up in 2006 that merits it's own Wiki page, and then three novels that don't have a single Wikipedia entry between them. If a novelist who has won the Booker Prize can't even rate a stub Wikipedia entry for his fourth book, it tells you that no one is reading him.
Published 12/20/18
I'm Not Scared (2003)
by Niccolo Ammaniti
Replaces: The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster (Reviewed April 2018)
I'm Not Scared is squarely in the "international best seller" category of contemporary literary fiction, written by Italian author Niccolo Ammaniti but going on to sell in more than 20 languages, and spawn a very well received movie version only a couple years after it was published. I'm Not Scared reminded me of a country Italian version of an early Ian "macabre" McEwan novel.
The narrator is a young boy, on the cusp of adolescence, who lives in a very small town in rural Italy during the 1970's. Only 219 pages in the English translation, the never quite bucolic idyll is quickly and rudely interrupted by his discovery of a young boy being kept in a pit on a farm outside his town. It emerges that the child has been kidnapped by the adults of the village, including his own father, the third act is filled with action and I'm sure it is that third act/resolution of the plot that catapulted I'm Not Scared to the international sales which marked it's success.
I'm Not Scared replaced The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster. Auster is one of the most over-represented authors in the first edition of the 1001 Books project- almost like the editors ran out of ideas near the end of the book. I did enjoy the Audiobook version, it was read by Auster itself, which is most unusual.
Vernon God Little(2003)
by DBC Pierre
Replaces Shroud by John Banville (Reviewed March 2018)
I could take or leave either of these books. Vernon God Little, written by Australian writer DBC Pierre, is what I found to be a risible "satire" about a near illiterate teen, living on the Texas border, who is accused of aiding and abetting his friend in a high school shooting massacre. Amazingly, Vernon God Little actually won the Booker Prize in 2003, and it seems to me the strongest argument in favor of doing what they actually ended up doing: Opening up the competition to American authors. After all, if you can give the award to an Australian who writes a book about Texas, you can give the award to a Texas who writes about Texas.
Almost more amazingly, Vernon God Little was Pierre's first published novel, and I think you can see the trajectory of his career in his Wikipedia page: A prize winning first novel from 2003, a follow-up in 2006 that merits it's own Wiki page, and then three novels that don't have a single Wikipedia entry between them. If a novelist who has won the Booker Prize can't even rate a stub Wikipedia entry for his fourth book, it tells you that no one is reading him.
Published 12/20/18
I'm Not Scared (2003)
by Niccolo Ammaniti
Replaces: The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster (Reviewed April 2018)
I'm Not Scared is squarely in the "international best seller" category of contemporary literary fiction, written by Italian author Niccolo Ammaniti but going on to sell in more than 20 languages, and spawn a very well received movie version only a couple years after it was published. I'm Not Scared reminded me of a country Italian version of an early Ian "macabre" McEwan novel.
The narrator is a young boy, on the cusp of adolescence, who lives in a very small town in rural Italy during the 1970's. Only 219 pages in the English translation, the never quite bucolic idyll is quickly and rudely interrupted by his discovery of a young boy being kept in a pit on a farm outside his town. It emerges that the child has been kidnapped by the adults of the village, including his own father, the third act is filled with action and I'm sure it is that third act/resolution of the plot that catapulted I'm Not Scared to the international sales which marked it's success.
I'm Not Scared replaced The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster. Auster is one of the most over-represented authors in the first edition of the 1001 Books project- almost like the editors ran out of ideas near the end of the book. I did enjoy the Audiobook version, it was read by Auster itself, which is most unusual.
Published 1/14/19
Fever and Spear (2002)
Your Face Tomorrow, Volume 1
by Javier Marias
Replaces: Unless by Carol Shields
Fever and Spear is actually the first part of a single work which was published in three separate volumes over the course of the decade. Despite the intent by the author, the only way to read the three volumes in English is by reading the three books- i.e. there is no single volume version. The tagline for all three volumes of Your Face Tomorrow is either "Henry James meets John Le Carre" or "Proust meets Ian Fleming," but both comparisons adequately convey the extent to which Your Face Tomorrow contains spy fiction motives and high modernist stream-of-consciousness musings on bigger issues.
Deza, the narrator and protagonist of all three volumes is a Spaniard, living in London after the break up of his marriage, who is recruited by a shadowy agency which, it is strongly implied, is a super secret wing of the British secret service. In Fever and Spear, the action doesn't progress beyond the initial recruitment, brief "spy" type encounters interspersed with lengthy digressions by Deza about the past and his personal history.
Fever and Spear replaces Unless, the novel by Canadian-American writer Carol Shields. It's hard to believe that Shields got two volumes in the first version of the 1001 Books list and eventual Nobel Prize in Literature winner and fellow Canadian writer of "domestic fiction" got zero. Marias, though represented in the first edition, is another member of the wave of Spanish language fiction which features so prominently in the later parts of the revised version of the 1001 Books list- a veritable flood!
Fever and Spear (2002)
Your Face Tomorrow, Volume 1
by Javier Marias
Replaces: Unless by Carol Shields
Fever and Spear is actually the first part of a single work which was published in three separate volumes over the course of the decade. Despite the intent by the author, the only way to read the three volumes in English is by reading the three books- i.e. there is no single volume version. The tagline for all three volumes of Your Face Tomorrow is either "Henry James meets John Le Carre" or "Proust meets Ian Fleming," but both comparisons adequately convey the extent to which Your Face Tomorrow contains spy fiction motives and high modernist stream-of-consciousness musings on bigger issues.
Deza, the narrator and protagonist of all three volumes is a Spaniard, living in London after the break up of his marriage, who is recruited by a shadowy agency which, it is strongly implied, is a super secret wing of the British secret service. In Fever and Spear, the action doesn't progress beyond the initial recruitment, brief "spy" type encounters interspersed with lengthy digressions by Deza about the past and his personal history.
Fever and Spear replaces Unless, the novel by Canadian-American writer Carol Shields. It's hard to believe that Shields got two volumes in the first version of the 1001 Books list and eventual Nobel Prize in Literature winner and fellow Canadian writer of "domestic fiction" got zero. Marias, though represented in the first edition, is another member of the wave of Spanish language fiction which features so prominently in the later parts of the revised version of the 1001 Books list- a veritable flood!
The prose is matter of fact and her narrative memorable. It's hard to read S: A Novel About the Balkans and think about narratives concerning other 20th century totalitarian death camps. The Serbian edition seems above the Nazi's (they didn't murder women and children) but below the garden-variety Russian and Chinese type camps. The focus here, of course, is not on the mass murder of the men of Muslim Bosnia but rather the sexual exploitation faced by S. and several other women in her camp.
The treatment this particular group of women is rough- several women are essentially raped to death and one teenager has her back carved up by an old friend from her village- she later dies from blood loss and shock. S: A Novel About the Balkans is not based on a personal experience, but Drakulic knows her source material- she has also has written several well received non-fiction volumes with a focus on the sexual abuses of the Bosnian war and the treatment of women by Serbian armed forces.
Published 5/25/18
The Story of Lucy Gault (2002)
by William Trevor
It's hard to write about The Story of Lucy Gault without ruining it, since the big plot surprise happens in the first 20 pages. The story takes place in the Irish country side, in the early 1920's, as the Troubles are engulfing Ireland. Captain Everhard Gault is a lesser member of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy, he and his wife Heloise live with their young daughter, Lucy on an isolated estate.
After a frightening encounter with local vigilantes opposed to English rule in Ireland, Gault makes the decision to exit Ireland. Upset with the decision, young Lucy decides to run away, a decision that tragically leaves the parents thinking that she is dead. They then depart, leaving Lucy behind. The families solicitor spends the next several decades looking for Everhard and Heloise, who are living the peripatetic live of wealthy wanderers. Lucy grows up, alone, still living in the family home.
The Story of Lucy Gault (2002)
by William Trevor
It's hard to write about The Story of Lucy Gault without ruining it, since the big plot surprise happens in the first 20 pages. The story takes place in the Irish country side, in the early 1920's, as the Troubles are engulfing Ireland. Captain Everhard Gault is a lesser member of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy, he and his wife Heloise live with their young daughter, Lucy on an isolated estate.
After a frightening encounter with local vigilantes opposed to English rule in Ireland, Gault makes the decision to exit Ireland. Upset with the decision, young Lucy decides to run away, a decision that tragically leaves the parents thinking that she is dead. They then depart, leaving Lucy behind. The families solicitor spends the next several decades looking for Everhard and Heloise, who are living the peripatetic live of wealthy wanderers. Lucy grows up, alone, still living in the family home.
The literature of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy seems to be a particular obsession of the English, as supposed to the Irish. Or perhaps it is better to say that it is a well established example of the hybrid literature from the global south that has made such deep inroads into global, English language literary markets. Lucy herself is an example of this particular culture made flesh, living out a wasted life in the wilds of Ireland, but a story that resonates with readers living in global cities a century later.
Published 1/16/19
When We Were Orphans (2000)
by Kenzo Ishiguro
Like I've been saying, I'm having trouble staying stocked up on Audiobooks so I'm developing new categories on the fly. Canonical non fiction titles is one, non canonical titles by canonical authors is another. As a recent Nobel Prize in Literature winner, Ishiguro has all of his books published in Audiobook format- this book was actually just the CD version re-uploaded onto the library app.
When We Were Orphans is well established as Ishiguro's least succesful novel, largely, I think because his awkward embrace with the detective fiction genre. Compare the largely positive reception his two other dives into genre fiction received: The Buried Giant (Arthurian fantasy) and Never Let Me Go (Dystopian sci fi). Of course, calling any Ishiguro novel a work of genre fiction isn't totally accurate, it's more like he assumes some of the elements of each genre as a vehicle for his favorite theme of human memory.
So it's not like I expect a Ishiguro penned detective story to be good in the same way a conventional work of detective fiction is good, but even by the lenient standards of serious lit authors working in genre fiction territory, When We Were Orphans is not a success. The central mystery: what happened to the parents of a London based Sherlock Holmes type detective after they disappeared in Shanghai when said detective was a boy, is treated by everyone within the world of the novel as a mystery that can and will be solved by the narrating detective, whereas any reader knows from page one that this is a hopeless and insane quest doomed to failure.
This central dissatisfaction with the underlying logic of the plot only grows as the book moves forward, and unlike the characters in his other books, the narrator in When We Were Orphans should be able to see how insane his quest is, in reality. For example, in The Buried Giant, the characters are literally subject to a spell cast by a Merlin figure that makes them forget the traumas of recent history. In The Unconsoled, the characters are clones. The prosaic resolution of the central dissapeared parent mystery at the heart of When We Were Orphans does nothing to alleviate the concern of the reader that he or she has wasted their time.
On the other side of the equation, Ishiguro has only written one book that could plausibly be considered a failure, which makes When We Were Orphans an interesting exception to the over-all world beating quality of his bibliography. Also, I can't be mad listening to an Ishiguro novel in Audiobook format, the digressive style of his narrators makes for good listening.
When We Were Orphans (2000)
by Kenzo Ishiguro
Like I've been saying, I'm having trouble staying stocked up on Audiobooks so I'm developing new categories on the fly. Canonical non fiction titles is one, non canonical titles by canonical authors is another. As a recent Nobel Prize in Literature winner, Ishiguro has all of his books published in Audiobook format- this book was actually just the CD version re-uploaded onto the library app.
When We Were Orphans is well established as Ishiguro's least succesful novel, largely, I think because his awkward embrace with the detective fiction genre. Compare the largely positive reception his two other dives into genre fiction received: The Buried Giant (Arthurian fantasy) and Never Let Me Go (Dystopian sci fi). Of course, calling any Ishiguro novel a work of genre fiction isn't totally accurate, it's more like he assumes some of the elements of each genre as a vehicle for his favorite theme of human memory.
So it's not like I expect a Ishiguro penned detective story to be good in the same way a conventional work of detective fiction is good, but even by the lenient standards of serious lit authors working in genre fiction territory, When We Were Orphans is not a success. The central mystery: what happened to the parents of a London based Sherlock Holmes type detective after they disappeared in Shanghai when said detective was a boy, is treated by everyone within the world of the novel as a mystery that can and will be solved by the narrating detective, whereas any reader knows from page one that this is a hopeless and insane quest doomed to failure.
This central dissatisfaction with the underlying logic of the plot only grows as the book moves forward, and unlike the characters in his other books, the narrator in When We Were Orphans should be able to see how insane his quest is, in reality. For example, in The Buried Giant, the characters are literally subject to a spell cast by a Merlin figure that makes them forget the traumas of recent history. In The Unconsoled, the characters are clones. The prosaic resolution of the central dissapeared parent mystery at the heart of When We Were Orphans does nothing to alleviate the concern of the reader that he or she has wasted their time.
On the other side of the equation, Ishiguro has only written one book that could plausibly be considered a failure, which makes When We Were Orphans an interesting exception to the over-all world beating quality of his bibliography. Also, I can't be mad listening to an Ishiguro novel in Audiobook format, the digressive style of his narrators makes for good listening.
Published 1/6/19
In Search of Klingsor (2003)
by Jorge Volpi
Replaces: The Body Artist by Don DeLillo
Mexican author Jorge Volpi made it onto the second edition of the 1001 Books list with In Search of Klingsor, his Pynchon/Stephenson-eque book about Nazi scientific efforts during the Second World War. Volpi remains largely unknown in the United States- only half of his books have been translated into English, and In Search of Klingsor is the only book that has been widely read.
It's clear that Spanish language artists were the big winners in the first revision of the 1001 Books list. Unlike an author like Roberto Bolano, Volpi isn't as glaring an omission, but it's hard to argue with Volpi taking the place of The Body Artist by Don DeLillo- since The Body Artist is a marginal book by an over-represented author. Volpi is working in crowded territory, with In Search of Klingsor recalling elements of Gravity's Rainbow and Cryptonomicon, but without the stylistic complexity of the former or the sheer epicness of the later (and the former, for that matter). In Seach of Klingsor also integrates the failed assassination of Adolf Hitler by a group of disaffected German army officers as a plot element. None of it really worked for me, but I'll take it over a book about disaffected wealthy English people any day.
In Search of Klingsor (2003)
by Jorge Volpi
Replaces: The Body Artist by Don DeLillo
Mexican author Jorge Volpi made it onto the second edition of the 1001 Books list with In Search of Klingsor, his Pynchon/Stephenson-eque book about Nazi scientific efforts during the Second World War. Volpi remains largely unknown in the United States- only half of his books have been translated into English, and In Search of Klingsor is the only book that has been widely read.
It's clear that Spanish language artists were the big winners in the first revision of the 1001 Books list. Unlike an author like Roberto Bolano, Volpi isn't as glaring an omission, but it's hard to argue with Volpi taking the place of The Body Artist by Don DeLillo- since The Body Artist is a marginal book by an over-represented author. Volpi is working in crowded territory, with In Search of Klingsor recalling elements of Gravity's Rainbow and Cryptonomicon, but without the stylistic complexity of the former or the sheer epicness of the later (and the former, for that matter). In Seach of Klingsor also integrates the failed assassination of Adolf Hitler by a group of disaffected German army officers as a plot element. None of it really worked for me, but I'll take it over a book about disaffected wealthy English people any day.
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