Cold Crematorium (2023) by József Debreczeni

 Audiobook Review

Cold Crematorium: Reporting from the Land of Auschwitz (2023)

by József Debreczeni

   This Holocaust memoir written by a Hungarian-Jewish author about his time in Auschwitz wasn't translated into English until 2023.  Since then it's garnered interest and acclaim, and when I heard about it late last year I immediately put the Audiobook onto my Libby Audiobook Library App.  The Hungarian Jews were one of the last groups from Central Europe to be deported en masse to the Nazi death camps courtesy of their recalicitant pro-Nazi government.  By the time the deportations got going, it was close to the end of the war which meant a couple things.  First, Hungarian Jews stood a better chance of surviving their ordeal because it started it much later than it did for German or Polish Jews.  Second, the later the war progressed, the more important it became for the Germans to extract free labor from the camp inmates, which led to a rough set of checks and balances and impetus other than wholesale extermination.  

  One fact that emerges time and time again from Holocaust lit is the dynamic where a trainload of folks shows up at a concentration camp and there is an immediate cull, some are sent directly to the gas chambers and others are sent to the work camps.  This is, for example, what happened to Sophie in the book Sophie's Choice: she is allowed to keep one of her two children during the initial cull.   Thus, the amount of gassing is directly related to the frequent arrival of new trainloads of undesirables.   In the absence of new arrivals the concentration camp experience was closer to your garden-variety 20th century totalitarian work camp: terrible conditions but also a desire at some level for the inmates to work productively at something. 

   This then, is a book about working at a concentration camp, and it is memorable because Debreczeni has a background in journalism and an eye for detail.  I'll never think about underwear the same ever again.

Heathen Valley (1962) by Romulus Linney

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Heathen Valley (1962)

by Romulus Linney

Valle Crucis, North Carolina

North Carolina: 17/20

    Heathen Valley is a strange (certainly by the standards of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America) pick, a novel based on a true story about the Protestant mission in the North Carolina Appalachians,  founded by an Episcopalian bishop who went on to be the highest ranked protestant to convert to Roman Catholicism.  Heathen Valley is based on a true story.  The Bishop in question is Levi Silliman Ives.  Literary fiction about religion is so rare that the novelty value is often enough to keep me interested, such was the case here, as the eponymous Heathen Valley itself, which is presented as a part of America without organized religion of any kind.  So much of the United States was founded directly by religious participants that an America without religion almost seems impossible.  

  However, as Heathen Valley depicts, parts of the Appalachians were founded without sanction from secular or religious authorities, leaving its residents without an organized religious presence.

Porgy (1925) by Dubose Heyward

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Porgy (1925)

by Dubose Heyward

Charleston, South Carolina

South Carolina: 15/16

    Here is another novel written about African-Americans by a white dude- using the "Gullah" dialect. (which to contemporary ears sounds like the way racists think black people talk in the South but which is actually a distinct dialect with deep African roots). Heyward turned this book into Porgy and Bess, an opera which had worldwide success but I'm assuming was racist as shit which is why no one talks about it anymore.  It was hard to get over the racist tropes in Porgy and I would def ask editor Susan Straight about this pick for sure.

Blacktop Wasteland (2020) by S. A. Crosby

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Blacktop Wasteland (2020)

by S.A. Crosby

153 Main St, Mathews, Virginia

Virginia: 16/17

   I have been trying to finish Blacktop Wasteland, S.A. Crosby's excellent crime-caper book, since it was published in 2020, but it hits so close to my professional life that I couldn't bear it.  Even within the constraints of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project, Blacktop Wasteland was a struggle.  I checked it out twice as an Audiobook and once as an Ebook before I finally finished a hardback copy from the public library. It was only a struggle because the characters are so richly drawn, particularly the protagonist, that it was impossible for me not to empathize with them to the point where reading/listening to the book was painful.   

Scarlet Sister Mary (1928) by Julia Peterkin

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Scarlet Sister Mary (1928)

by Julia Peterkin

Fort Motte, South Carolina

South Carolina: 14/16

    I actually do want to visit South Carolina, Charleston, particularly, and I thought the books from that part of the state were interesting and the ones from outside the city less so.  Scarlet Sister Mary is a Pulitzer Prize winner and it is also a book about freed black slaves written in dialect by a white author so.... kind of cringe? I mean, it's cringe, but what are you going to do.  Mary, the eponymous protagonist, is a woman who marries young and is quickly abandoned by her husband, leading her to have multiple children with a succession of men to the mild approbation of her community.  Having now done enough non-fiction reading (largely via the NY Times hundred best books of the 21st century, which has a half dozen titles on the subject), I now understand that the idea of imposing conventional bourgeois morality on a formerly enslaved population is absurd since the women were forced to have sex by their owners whenever and wherever they pleased, and their children were then frequently sold as slaves.  Where does Christian morality have a place in that world?

  So, I guess beside the entire premise being ridiculous, it's an interesting milieu and one entirely absent of white faces.

Bastard out of Carolina (1992) by Dorothy Allison

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

by Dorothy Allison

Greenville, South Carolina

South Carolina:  13/16

    Bastard Out of Carolina had me searching for the "Trauma Porn" wikipedia page (which they have titled "Misery Lit" to see if this would have been one of the first books in that genre and sure enough, the Wikipedia page lists Wild Swans (1992) and Angela's Ashes (1996) as "seminal works establishing the genre."  I think there is a good case to add this book to that list. In more old fasthioned terminology it's a bildungsroman about the miserable childhood of the author who was raised by her mother and abusive (physical, mental and yes, sexual) step father in shit town South Carolina (AKA Greenville).  Bastard Out of Carolina still has a capacity to shock over thirty years later- particularly the scenes where the protagonist pleasures herself to the thought of her (physical) abuse at the hands of her stepfather.  

   When things escalate to full blown rape later in the book, she does not take delight in the experience.  Besides exploring that extremely, extremely forbidden link between childhood sexual abuse and precocious sexuality,  Bastard Out of Carolina is also notable/ahead of its time in the way it depicts a mother who ultimately choses her partner over her child.  That continues to be a fraught subject, as the recent turmoil surrounding Nobel Prize winner Alice Munro, demonstrates. 

Stranger than Fiction: Lives of the 20th Century Novel (2024) by Edwin Frank

 Book Review

Stranger Than Fiction: 

Lives of the 20th Century Novel (2024)

by Edwin Frank

   There was probably no one on EARTH more excited about the prospect of reading Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the 20th Century Novel:  A book pitched at a general reader offering a meandering stroll through some subjective highlights from the 20th century literary canon? Yes please!   Because I was so excited, someone considering reading this book shouldn't be put off by the fact that I ultimately felt disappointed by Stranger Than Fiction.  I certainly appreciated the premise, and enjoyed certain chapters, but on the whole I finished without having added significantly to my thoughts about the 20th century novel. 

   Or maybe it's more the case that the blog format doesn't allow me to do this book justice.  I think to really appreciate Stranger Than Fiction I would have to buy a copy (I checked out the e-book from the library) and really mark it up, make marginal notations, etc.  Then I would need someone to talk about this book with, someone who has read as much as the author.  

   One of the things I did think about after reading was Frank's idea that the 20th century novel was in conversation with itself from the very beginning.  His best illustration of this was the dialogue that publisher/critic/author Virginia Woolf had with James Joyce and Ulysses, a book she did not like.  Here we are, right in the center of the genesis/apogee of the 20th century novel and one major author hates the work of another major author.  

    

In the Heat of the Night (1965) by John Ball

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

In the Heat of the Night (1965)

by John Ball

Wells, South Carolina

South Carolina: 12/16

  I am inching towards closing out Virginia/North and South Carolina.  In the Heat of the Night was a welcome respite from the parade of sad girls that populate a majority of the 1,001 Novels project and it's a certified classic as well- I checked out the Penguin Classics 50th anniversary edition from the library.  My sense is that In the Heat of the Night has been soft-dropped out of any applicable canon because it's a book with a black protagonist written  by a white guy AND because the white characters use the n-word like it is going out of style throughout the book- they are an obviously unsympathetic bunch, but I swear, there is an n word on almost every of the 150 pages of In the Heat of the Night,  It's hard to imagine a contemporary reader stomaching the rough language without taking offense (or wanting to read a similar book written by a black author).  

  The black police detective from Pasadena- Virgil Tibbs- is a very pre-1960's type of fellow- always careful not to give offense to his racist white hosts, even as the n bombs explode around him. The idea that Tibbs would want to help these people solve a murder seemed laughable to me. 

Dry Bones in the Valley (2014) by Tim Bouman

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Dry Bones in the Valley (2014)

by Tim Bouman

Susquehanna Municipality, Franklin Forks, Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania: 5/27

  Dry Bones in the Valley is another regional police procedural set in the Pennstucky, i.e. the Pennsylvania Appalachians.   Unlike the Amish-country set snoozer from yesterday,  Dry Bones in the Valley is more interesting, if only because of the frequent and animated presence of guns, gun fire and gun play on nearly every page.  It turns out the people in this part of the country really like their guns.  All kind of guns- pistols, rifles and even muzzle loaded muskets, which play an important part in unravelling one of the two murders that must be solved.

   Bouman does an excellent job of evoking this unfamiliar (to me, anyway) part of the country, with plenty of well described walks in different landscapes. There isn't a great deal of tension that the murder victim remains a john doe up until the case is actually solved, which guts many of the emotions a reader might invest in a book of this genre.  There is very little building of the case and then the solving at the end reads like something out of an Encyclopedia Brown book, but still, I did enjoy this relative to other examples of detective fiction in the 1,001 Novels project.

Just Plain Murder (2018) by Laura Bradford

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Just Plain Murder (2018)

by Laura Bradford

Paradise, Pennsylvania 

Pennsylvania: 4/27

   Editor Susan Straight loves herself a regional detective novel, so I wasn't surprised that "Amish Country" is represented in the 1,001 Novels project by, yes, you guessed it, a detective novel set in Amish country.  Straight calls this "an engrossing debut" in her map copy but this was honestly one of my least favorite books in the entire 1,001 Novels project.  The narrator is not the detective himself but rather his girlfriend, a thirty-something who has retreated to Amish country to run a small tchotchke store after her marriage in New York City broke up.   There is less action in Just Plain Murder than your average coming of age book about an underprivileged girl growing up in the urban Northeast- and fewer murders.  When the mystery is finally solved, the reader is likely to be struck by the over-all weakness of the entire book. And so much talk about this sad ladies feelings. 

Juice (2024) by Tim Winton

 Book Review

Juice (2024)

by Tim Winton

  Juice is a well-regarded new novel by Australian author Tim Winton- it hasn't been released inside the US yet, though you can buy an international version on Amazon in semi-bootleg fashion.  I picked up the hardback during my recent visit to Ireland.  Juice is the story of an un-named narrator from future Australia who has been captured by another nameless survivor as he seeks a resting spot with a similarly un-named little girl.  As he sits in his cage, trying to talk his way out of what feels like certain doom, he narrates his past in chapter sized portions, with his interlocutory frequently commenting on his chattiness.  The frame of the story isn't great, but the story itself:  About surviving in the post-global warming north of Australia as a homesteader and agent for an anarchist band of fighters seeking to extirpate the remainders of the old world order, is.

    Winton combines a well-researched understanding of homesteading in the wastes of Australia with a decent grasp of human emotion and a vision of far-future life that sounds extremely plausible.  Great horrors are hinted at but rarely described, rather Winton produces a survival narrative punctuated with episodes of astonishing violence- a savvy combination that had me wondering if Juice had been purchased by Apple/Netflix/HBOmax for a tv version before it even came out in the US.  It's not hard to imagine the events of Juice being transferred to the American southwest or a post-global warming great plains- one of the critical episodes even takes place in the well-described Utah wilderness.   American fans of clim-fic would be well advised to watch for the American release, sure to be forthcoming, or even pick up the semi-bootleg foreign editions for sale at Amazon right now.

She's Always Hungry (2024) by Eliza Clark

 Audiobook Review

She's Always Hungry (2024)

by Eliza Clark

   I'm pretty sure I read about She's Always Hungry in the Guardian, though it also got a great capsule review in the horror column of the New York Times book review which called it one of the "best collections of the year, horror or otherwise."  I agree with that assessment and Clark reminds me of one of the wave of Latin American authors- Mariana Enriquez. Samantha Schweblin and Fernanda Melchor- who use horror motifs to write what is essentially literary fiction in a scare-suit.  I really enjoyed listening to this Audiobook- particularly those stories narrated by the Author herself, where she comes across as a mix between Sally Rooney and R.F. Kuang.

    Unusually for a short story collection, they all landed with me. That tells me that Clark is very good at getting herself into and out of set-ups without leaving the reader confused (too little information) or bored (too much).  Highly recommend this collection and excited for whatever comes next from Eliza Clark(English)

Old School (2003) by Tobias Wolff

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Old School (2003)

by Tobias Wolff

Pottstown, Pennsylvania 

Pennsylvania: 3/27

   The way the Pennsylvania picks for the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America are arranged geographically, there is a heavy concentration inside the triangle of Philadelphia, Lancaster and Allentown, weighted towards Philly.  There's are no picks from the entire Northwest quadrant of the state, and then a smattering of titles between Philly and Pittsburgh.   Old School, set at a prep school, is located smack in the center of the eastern triangle of titles and it is also notable because Tobias Wolff, is, astonishingly, the first author to be selected twice in the 1,001 Novels: A Library of American project.  Wolff, of course, is already in the 1,001 Novels project representing New Jersey with another school (university) set title, The Final Club.

   I actually enjoyed Old School- I picked it out because it was available as an Audiobook selection- because it involves real life authors visiting this fictious school and thus engages with popular-American literary culture circa the late 1950's early 1960's, as witnessed by a student at the school- the narrator.  The Final Club (1990) and this book were written a decade apart.  If you look at his Amazon Author page, this book is his third top title and The Final Club is out of print, so.  

   I really liked reading/hearing about Ayn Rand and Hemingway as characters, and the thoughts that these characters had about them, although there is nothing ground-breaking as far as actual insight goes, it makes the prep-school centered plot less insufferable than it would have otherwise been (see my review of The Final Club.) 

Language City (2024) by Ross Perlin

Audiobook Review

Language City (2024)

by Ross Perlin

    I hesitate to out myself as a fan of language and languages given the lack of broad audience appeal for this sort of contact.  I'm not a die hard language guy, and I'm not a specialist in the field but I have a general interest in the study of languages that extends beyond engaging with Duolingo (Spanish, Chinese(Mandarin) and Irish).   I checked the Audiobook of Language City, written by a linguistic scholar for a general audience, after I read the New York Times review.  It wasn't a rave, but the subject matter and the idea of hearing this book, rather than reading it, made me go for it.  

   Language City is narrated by the author, a linguistic scholar with ties to... I think... Columbia University, in the field of ethno-linguistic preservation studies.   Certainly, with the exception of the recounting of certain preservation related field-trips to the foothills of the Himalayas, Language City is New York, and the idea of the book is to give a mixed view of the past and present vis a vis New York being the absolute apogee of world linguistic diversity.   Some the chapters are about hardcore linguistic preservation efforts with which the author is utterly engaged and other chapters, the chapter on Yiddish, for example, is more about the history of languages in the New York City.  

   I enjoyed Language City  as an Audiobook, because, as I suspected, Perlin himself has recordings he himself made on these different languages, and listening to the Audiobook allows the reader to hear those recordings, instead of just reading about them on the page.  Add that as an exhibit to the ongoing "Are Audiobooks actually as good as written books/do they count?" debate. 

God's Pocket (1983) by Pete Dexter

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

God's Pocket (1983)

by Pete Dexter

Devil's Pocket, South Philadelphia Pennsylvania 

Pennsylvania: 2/27

       Still finishing up the last chapter in print, but I'm on to the next chapter in Audiobook, and I actually enjoyed God's Pocket, which is about a South Philadelphia construction murder who is murdered on the job (deservedly so, many would say) and the consequences in its aftermath.  Pete Dexter is a newspaper columnist turned novelist, most known for winning the National Book Award in 1988 for his novel Paris Trout.  His last novel was published in 2009, and I'm guessing he is retired given his lack of recent publishing activity.   The most interesting aspect of this book for me is the character of the urban newspaper columnist- a role which had quite a run in the 20th century as an arbiter of urban intellectualism in many US cities but which has (sadly?) fallen by the wayside. 

      I thought God's Pocket would be a good Audiobook because of the working-class, Philadelphia accents, and I was not wrong.  At a little over six hours, it made for quick listen and it gave me the thought to go look up the 2014 movie, which starred Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

Mama Day by Gloria Naylor

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Mama Day (1988)

by Gloria Naylor

Willow Springs, South Carolina

South Carolina:  11/14

   Mama Day is an intergenerational family novel written from a variety of perspectives about an matriarchal African American clan that managed to obtain title to an island in between South Carolina and Georgia in the time before the United States was a country.  Every since, the clan has lived between and apart from the surrounding world creating a distinct African-American world that operates in the absence of white people. As is always the case, the use of multiple perspectives telling the same set of events once, twice and three times over slows down the pace of reading.   Particularly, the main plot line, about Ophelia AKA "Baby Girl" AKA "Coco" the scion of the imperial line of Days, and her relationship with George, a self-made orphan who has risen to be a co-owner of his own engineering firm in New York City, is told first by Ophelia then by George, or vice versa, for the entire length of the book.   As it turns out, despite interesting moments, neither character is particularly insightful about their situation, George having been raised without a family full stop and Ophelia having been raised in a matriarchy with literally no strong male role models.  

  Neither one of them has a clue, and that might have made for an interesting book, but after the couple head back to Ophelia's home island, the book bogs down in a magical-realist witchcraft plot that does no favors to any of the characters.  Mama Day was a swing and a miss for me, with some interesting moments- honestly, ANY African American characters who aren't totally poverty stricken are a welcome break from the usual tone of the titles selected by editor Susan Straight, and the scenes set in New York City, specifically the courtship between George and Coco, fit this bill.  However, the scenes that are set down in the South are tedious, and the idea that this whole book eventually boils down to (spoiler alert) Coco being voodoo hexed by a rival struck me as preposterous- and that's writing as a fan of magical realism, not to mention speculative fiction.

Disturbance (2020) by Phillipe Lançon

 Book Review

Disturbance (2020)

by Phillipe Lançon

  Phillipe Lançon is a French journalist who was injured during the Charlie Hebdo Islamicist shooting.  Basically, he had the lower half of his face shot off.  Disturbance details his recovery. I actually hadn't heard about Disturbance until I read Houellebecq's latest novel, Annihilation, which involves a similar kind of situation with a severe facial trauma.  Houellebecq's narrator/protagonist references Disturbance repeatedly and after finishing Annihilation it occurred to be that Disturbance might well be the better book and indeed, it was. 

   Lancon narrates his excruciating tale with the kind of sang-froid and aplomb that a reader expects from a member of the French intellectual class.  Yes, he had the lower half of his face shot off by an Islamicist angry about a cartoon but that won't stop him from thinking and philosophizing his was out of his situation- close to a year of surgery and rehabilitation often in circumstances of constant, excruciating discomfort.  A typical reader could only imagine, but thanks to Lancon, they do not have to. Rather, you get every detail- and Disturbance is not a short book- along with equally contemplative musings about the people around Lancon- his girlfriend, his ex, his family, the surgeon. 

Polostan (2024) by Neal Stephenson

 Audiobook Review

Polostan (2024)

by Neal Stephenson

   Neal Stephenson is probably my favorite author of popular/genre fiction.  He doesn't aspire to literary fiction status, but he is a genuinely inventive writer of  popular fiction, whether it be in his science fiction past or his thriller/dystopia/historical fiction present.   The thing about Neal Stephenson novels is that the reader is never bored by the ideas or the action, even when his books extend to lengths well beyond what is standard in the book industry.  Cryptonomicon, his representative on the 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die list, has a 40 hour plus length Audiobook edition.   Unfortunately, someone has gotten wise at his publisher because Polostan arrives as a clearly marked "Volume 1" of something called the "Bomb Light" cycle.   I'm assuming that the entire cycle is centered on the protagonist of Polostan: Dawn Rae Bjornsen, a plucky with a capital p early 20th century Communist/Anarchist of mixed Russian/American ancestry.  

   This book essentially sets up her backstory:  An early childhood in post-Revolutionary Russia, girlhood in America with her Russian-agent Dad during the Great Depression and then back to Russia after a series of adventures as a young woman.  The "present" of volume 1 finds her held captive by Russian intelligence as they evaluate her potential use as an agent.  Polostan uses a series of flashbacks as Dawn is vetted by the predecessor of the KGB.   Even knowing this going in, I wasn't angry, since it is, indeed, a chore to take on a thousand page novel, as is usually the case with Stephenson.  

  It's hard not to consider the impact of English writer of speculative fiction China Miéville, who is well known for introducing Marxist-Leninist/Communist/Anarchist themes into his speculative fiction, on Stephenson's choice of theme.  Stephenson is firmly in spy/espionage/thriller territory here, there isn't a single whiff of science-fiction in this book.  A reader might be advised to wait for whatever film/tv edition this series generates before reading the book.

The Origins of the Irish (2013) by J.P. Mallory

 Book Review

The Origins of the Irish (2013)

by J.P. Mallory

  I was in Ireland over the break and finally, on my third visit, made it to somewhere outside of Dublin (Cork and Belfast).  That got me thinking about the origins of the Irish people.  It's an interesting subject largely because of the status of the Irish language as one of the linguistic fringes of the Indo-European family of languages, which covers pretty much every language between India (Hindu) to Ireland that isn't Arabic.  Most laypeople could tell you that the ancient Irish were "the Celts," but as Mallory, a Professor in linguistics with a specialization in the roots of Indo-European languages, frequently opines, "the Celts" don't really mean anything in scholarly terms. 

   Historical genetics has also taken a huge leap in the years since The Origins of the Irish- Mallory mentions this in two post-scripts to the revised version which was published in 2017, but even since then advances have been made.  Mallory, who spent his professional life at Queen's University in Belfast, marshals the archeological evidence in chapters that make up most of the book.  After archeology he turns to genetics, then "self-reported" evidence from the Irish themselves before wrapping up with linguistic evidence.  

   He reports that archeologists pinpoint a transition between the mesolithic (stone age/hunters and gatherers) and neolithic (farming) populations, that tracks with changes found across Europe.  Specifically, that a population flowed from Anatolia through Southern Europe and Spain up to Ireland, and that this population genetically displaced the previous population.  This second group also began to build monumental architecture (think Stonehenge) and introduced prestige burials to the area.  Mallory observes that this group is genetically significant to Ireland but that the time horizon doesn't match up with any evidence supporting the language of Irish, so it is unlikely that the neolithic immigrants were "Irish" in that sense.

    Rather, Mallory posits an introduction of the Irish language to the growth of "hill-forts" which are also found in parts of central Europe during early Celtic migration periods.  He also argues that burials and objects found that are linked to horses and chariots are likely to support the introduction of the Irish language, probably from Scotland or the area surrounding the Isle of Man.  He concludes that the introduction of the Irish language is not linked to any genetic shift in the population, but either represents a linguistic shift brought about by a new elite or by a group that was genetically similar to the earlier, non-Irish speaking population.

A Country of Strangers (1989) by Susan Richards Shreve

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

A Country of Strangers (1989)

by Susan Richards Shreve

Elm Grove, Virginia

Virginia: 15/17

     Set in then-rural Virginia outside of Washington DC, A Country of Strangers is a work of historical fiction (World War II) about the intertwined fates of two families, one African-American and the other white.  Like many of the less succesful titles on the 1,001 Novels list (I had to buy a copy because the Los Angeles Public Library doesn't have one), A Country of Strangers has some interesting moments and take the notion of "place" seriously, but wasn't compelling as an overall work.   Author Shreve hints at some interesting subjects- the idea of an interracial, extra-martial affair between the Danish immigrant wife of the white couple and the husband of the African American family, but doesn't take it far enough to create real interest in the reader.   The plot line involving a pregnant 13 year old from a cadet branch of the African American family sparks interest but the character herself, named Prudential after the insurance company, does not. 

Let the Dead Bury the Dead (1992) by Randall Kenan

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Let the Dead Bury the Dead (1992)

by Randall Kenan

Tim's Creek, North Carolina

North Carolina: 16/20

   Let the Dead Bury the Dead is a book of (inter-connected?) short stories set in the fictional town of Tim's Creek, founded by an escaped slave on the model of the "Maroon" communities of Jamaica.  The final story in the collection gives some historical context, and this isn't the first book of short-stories in the 1,001 Novels project to be set in a similar environment.  Despite having stories with fantastical elements- the first story features an infant who can tell the future-  Let the Dead Bury the Dead has a realist vibe even when the subject matter is more like speculative fiction.  

  Probably the most unusual aspect of Let the Dead Bury the Dead is the LGBT themed story- rare for the rural south and even rarer for rural African-American communities, though editor Susan Straight has gone out of her way to include those viewpoints in the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project.  Kenan was known as a member of the LGBT community before his death in 2020. 

Edisto (1984) by Padgett Powell

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Edisto (1984)

by Padgett Powell

Edisto Island, South Carolina

South Carolina: 10/14

   Edisto was the debut novel from Padgett Powell. It was nominated as a finalist in 1984 for the National Book Award and that was just about the peak of Powell's literary prominence despite five more novels over the years- including a sequel to this book, Edisto Revisited, published in 1996.  Edisto is a conventional bildungsroman written from the perspective of Everson Manigault, living with his eccentric, semi-single Mother, "The Doctor" (she's a professor) in a ramshackle model home of a beach house on the South Carolina coast.  The plot is coming-of-age 101, but Everson is a class above your normal teen, American narrator, with a wit and verve that bring to mind an 80's era hipster more than the struggling son of a (well-educated) single mom with a drinking problem.  Of course, where would the bildungsroman even be without inattentive parenting.

    I was also challenged by the modernist flourishes introduced by Powell- removing narrative guardrails and leaving the reader guessing about what was actually going on throughout large portions of the plot. "Challenging" describes almost none of the books in the 1,001 Novels project, so having to go back and re-read certain chapters really stood out to me during my reading experience.  

Gap Creek (1999) by Robert Morgan

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Gap Creek (1999)

by Robert Morgan

Gap Creek, South Carolina

South Carolina: 9/14

   Gap Creek is an "Oprah book," i.e. a book selected by Oprah Winfrey for her "Oprah's Book Club."  I would never openly mock Oprah Winfrey, but I've never been a fan of Oprah's club or any of the other celebrity book clubs which followed hers.  A couple hundred books into the 1,001 Novels project I can now say that I look forward to "her" books on the 1,001 Novels list for a couple reasons.  First, chicken or egg questions aside, Oprah picks hits- people actually read the books she likes, which makes her a person of significance in the world of literary fiction because;  second, Oprah and her team have genuinely good taste- it's a taste that clearly favors stories of struggle and adversity often featuring characters from the lower levels of the socio-economic ladder, but those are exactly the type of narrative I'm trying to access through this project, so that makes it a match.  

   Gap Creek was picked more or less from obscurity- it was published by a regional press (Algonquin Press of North Carolina) and half of the New York Times review- published two months before Oprah picked it for her club- spent half the review trying to convince readers not to ignore Gap Creek for a variety of reasons related to the marketing.  Julie Harmon, the narrator and protagonist is the middle daughter of a struggling Appalachian hill family.  Dad is permanently disabled, forcing Julie into the role of provider on the family farm (she is something like 15 when the action starts).  As will surprise no reader with any familiarity with how things go in this category of novel, Julie leaps to marry literally the first man who talks to her as a means of escape.

   Though she frequently bemoans her quick choice throughout the book, I, for one, thought she did just fine, since the husband she picks doesn't beat her up or abandon her, which is pretty rare behavior in this part of the country as far as literary fiction goes.  Julie and her husband re-locate to a shared "house" in Gap Creek and start building a life together.  Although there is less interpersonal drama than a reader might expect from the place and time of the book, the physical environment picks up the slack, providing a series of natural and man-made catastrophe's,

   I agree with the New York Times reviewer and presumably Oprah's selection team that Robert Morgan is a rare American author who can write convincingly about manual labor.  Unlike many of the narrators/protagonist in this part of America, I actually liked Julie Harmon: give me a plucky American broad any day of the week.

  

The Ice at the Bottom of the World (1990) by Mark Richard

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Ice at the Bottom of the World (1990)

by Mark Richard

Franklin, Virginia

Virginia: 14/17

   This collection of short-stories won the Faulkner/Pen AWARD in 1990.  He published one other collection of short-stories, one novel and one work of non-fiction.  As the Penguin product page makes clear, you can file Richard under "southern gothic," comparing him to Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor.  I didn't have to read the product page to get that vibe- it comes through on every page.  When I read an author with a career trajectory like Mark Richard:  early short story collection wins a prize, a debut novel that doesn't sell and then...nothing...I'm always interested in the question of "what happened?"  Here, the combination of reading his short story collection and a description of his first and only novel, Fishboy, gives me a good idea of what happened.  His first novel didn't sell, and there was nothing about the way it didn't sell to inspire a big publisher to give him another shot, and Richard, for whatever reasons either couldn't or wouldn't take a step backwards.  His Wikipedia page fills in the rest- he moved to Los Angeles and started writing and producing both network and prestige series television.  There you have it. 

The Tubman Command (2019) by Elizabeth Cobb

1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Tubman Command (2019)

by Elizabeth Hobbs

Combahee River, South Carolina

South Carolina: 8/14

   The Tubman Command is a work of historical fiction imagining an episode from the career of Harriet Tubman.  Tubman is best known for her success as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, where she personally led hundreds of enslaved people to freedom.  This book is about her work for the Union Army during the Civil War as a scout, where she was sent ahead of Union forces to reconnoiter and gather information, at great personal risk to her person.  Specifically, it's about a raid up the Combahee River in South Carolina to free blacks from several of the great plantations in that part of the state.   It's a fairly interesting story but the fact that this is a white author writing from the perspective of a famous African American person made me a tad uncomfortable.  Certainly, if you know that fact you know that there is not going to be a single negative observation written about any of the African American characters.  The Tubman Command is more like a hagiographic work than a novel.

Black Thunder (1936) by Arna Bontemps

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Black Thunder (1936)

by Arna Bontemps

Richmond, Virginia

Virginia: 13/17

  Black Thunder scores high marks in several categories. First, it was written before 1980.  Second, the author is an interesting dude (African American, lived in Los Angeles).  Third, it has an interesting subject, a historical slave revolt in Virginia in the very early 19th century (1800).  Understanding what actually happened in the South before the Civil War requires reading about slave revolts because of the fierce impact they had on the wild imaginations of white elites in the South, and the way that fear was then translated into a very heavy handed legal regime.  It might sound absurd to talk about more or less cruel forms of slavery, but the American South was, in fact, quite cruel relative to other slave systems, with slavery being hereditary and with strict limits being placed on uplifting slaves (It was illegal to teach slaves to read in South Carolina) as well as limits being placed on the ability of non-slave blacks to remain in slave states (Freed slaves had to leave Virginia within 48 hours of freedom.)

   I wish there were more picks like this in the 1,001 Novels project.  If I was involved in any revision I would add more older titles and remove more of the recent titles. 

Hello Down There (1993) by Michael Parker

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Hello Down There (1993)

by Michael Parker

Elizabeth City, North Carolina

North Carolina 15/20

   All the titles left in this chapter of the 1,001 Novels project are physical or ebooks- no more Audiobooks available.  That means these are the most obscure titles left, since every book with any kind of track record gets an Audiobook editions these days.  Hello Down There is a work of historical fiction about a university student who becomes addicted to morphine in the 1950's after sustaining a back-injury.  He's the oldest son of a wealthy local family (they own the building that contains the local pharmacy) and his addiction is the kind where he bullies the local pharmacist into supplying him drugs in excess of what he is legally allowed to possess.   It's a gentrified addiction, in other words.  

  He draws others into his orbit, notably the daughter of the pharmacist, and he spirits her away to the prison in Kentucky which happened to possess the first drug detox facility in the United States.  It's not unfamiliar literary territory- William Burroughs writes about the same place in Junky.   Hello Down There is another first novel and it's hard not to think there is some biographical elements involved even taking into account the historical setting.  I would imagine that Parker is from the same area.  Parker's drug-addled, well educated protagonist is a welcome respite from the legions of troubled adolescent girls that editor Susan Straight favors, but there wasn't a huge amount of action here and the central relationship between Parker's drug addled college-educated protagonist and his uneducated teen-age boo was not revelatory. 

A Crooked Tree (2021) by Una Mannion

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

 A Crooked Tree (2021)

by Una Mannion

Valley Forge Mountain, Pennsylvania 

Pennsylvania: 1/27

   New Year, New States!  I've run out of easily available Audiobooks from the last chapter (Maryland through South Carolina) so I'm moving forward on two fronts- back north to Pennsylvania and continuing south through Georgia and Florida while I try to polish off the Ebook/physical book portion of the prior chapter.   The first book from Pennsylvania is A Crooked Tree by Una Mannion.  This novel is from the most common category of the 1,001 Novels project:  A bildungsroman written from the POV of a adolescent girl in difficult socio-economic circumstances, sub-category white, sub-category debut novel.  Like almost all of the books in this category we've got a narrator who is trapped in her family home, in the middle of nowhere (played here by someplace called "Valley Forge Mountain.")

  Here, our narrator is Libby, an awkward 15 year old girl living with her single mom and three siblings (one older sister, one older brother, two younger sisters.)  Driving home from school at the beginning of the book, her younger sister angers her Mom to the point where mom abandons younger sister on the side of the road, forcing her to walk home.  Sister is picked up and mildly assaulted by the sinister "barbie man" an albino type dude with long blonde hair.  Sister jumps out of barbie man's moving vehicle to escape and reaches Libby's weekly babysitting gig, promising her to secrecy so that their mom doesn't get in trouble.  Events move forward from that point in somewhat predictable fashion- I was surprised at the number of reviewers who expressed enthusiasm at the plotting in A Crooked Tree but it might be a function of my day-to-day experience in the criminal justice system.

     The world of "the mountain" is well-depicted, but I wasn't particularly enthralled by Libby or her troubled family.

In Memory of Junior (1992) by Clyde Edgergton

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

In Memory of Junior (1992)

by Clyde Edgergton

Summerlin, North Carolina

North Carolina: 14/20

    Another day, another Southern writer I'd never heard of before I started the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project.  He certainly isn't obscure, with a decades long track record of having his books reviewed by the New York Times and a prominent position teaching creative writing at a regional university in North Carolina.  The Times called this book "a shaggy cemetery story narrated by the 21 most interested parties."  I kind of groaned to myself when I saw that this small, 215 page book came with its own family tree in front a la a 900 page Russian novel, but it wasn't especially difficult to follow because none of these 20 characters do anything in this book except plot and scheme over the burial location of some family members.

   There is also a minor, unresolved struggle based on an inheritance that will flow based on the death order of an elderly couple.  In Memory of Junior was very much one of those books on the 1,001 Novels list where I just didn't care what happened in the book, didn't care about any of the characters and didn't find the milieu/setting interesting in anyway.   I did appreciate the literary technique expressed by cramming 20 narrators into 215 pages- which is a technique that George Saunders wrote all the way to a major literary award in recent years (Lincoln in the Bardo) but that book was about Lincoln and a bunch of ghosts, and this is about a bunch of redneck southerners who have nothing going on (except for the one family member who is a lawyer in Charlotte.)

Now You Know It All (2021) by Joanna Pearson

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Now You Know It All (2021)

by Joanna Pearson

Shelby, North Carolina

North Carolina: 13/20

    Now You Know It All is a debut collection of short-stories by psychiatrist/author Joanna Pearson.  It was published by the University of Pittsburgh press- the first work I've read published by the University of Pittsburgh.   It also won the Drue Heinz literary prize, which I'd never heard of before but must be linked to the Heinz ketchup family.  The prize was decided by Edward P. Jones, Pulitzer Prize winner and he was attracted to the straight-forward story telling embraced by Pearson- no metafictional fuckery here.  Clocking in at 224 pages with wide margins and large type, I read Now You Know It All in a single sitting and as is the case with many collections of short stories I found myself driving to grasp the links between the stories.   

   At least most of the subjects in these short stories have college educations. Beyond that it's the familiar constellation of female characters grappling with the fissures between jobs and spouses, kids and parents. There are a couple stories that edge into speculative fiction- my favorite was the story about a woman hitch-hiking in a perpetual-pandemic future who encounters a car of masked revelers on their way to an infection ball. 

Tending to Virginia (1987) by Jill McCorkle

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Tending to Virginia (1987)

by Jill McCorkle

Lumberton, North Carolina

North Carolina: 12/20

  Tidewater Tales and Oldest Living Confederate War Widow Tells All really cramped my style in November/December 2024.  I spent almost a month and a half just reading those two physical books.  It created backlog on my physical reading list that I'm only clearing out now.  Tending to Virginia is one of those titles, a book that only exists as a hardback check out from the library.  I'd never heard of McCorkle before the 1,001 Novels project but it looks like she has a decent sized regional footprint with some national recognition- 74 returns in the New York Times search index and some minor prizes spread out over 20 years.   Her last book was in 2013, which makes me think she is semi-retired.  Tending to Virginia was her third book and it made the New York Times Notable Book list in 1987.  The original review pointed to her "skillful use of voice" and that was something I noticed. She also uses many types of modernist tricks to keep the reader off-balance, specifically, she doesn't sign-post her shifts in time as the three generations of women bedsit one of their number (Virginia) who is in the last stages of a difficult pregnancy.

   There are, as one might expect, deeply held family secrets which are exposed during Tending to Virginia.  Tending to Virginia is also an example of American literary fiction where the characters exists solely within the confines of a domestic setting and have no educational or professional experiences to speak of between the group of them.   The result of this situation is that "family" is the only subject of conversation that can sustain them in a literary fashion, so that is all they talk about. Ever.  In books like Tending to Virginia I yearn for scenes where the characters just go outside and describe the world around them, but that rarely happens in this book or any that shares its characteristics.  Family is everything to these women, and to abandon family is almost unthinkable.  Sounds boring to me.

The New Jim Crow (2010) by Michelle Alexander

 100 Best Books of the 21st Century (New York Times)

The New Jim Crow (2010)

by Michelle Alexander

#69

    The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander is the 55th of the 100 books I've read from the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century list.  As a criminal defense attorney who has spent over 20 years practicing in state and federal criminal court,  I am intimately familiar with every argument that Alexander made AND which of those arguments have succeeded AND I also have opinions about her arguments have harmed the Democratic party in recent national elections.   Alexander presents a blue-print for the racial justice portion of the post-George Floyd era and personally, I'm pretty convinced that some of the arguments in here helped Trump to victory.

   Alexander's main thesis is that the mass incarceration that followed the declaration of the "war on drugs" is the New Jim Crow: A race based system of government sponsored control aimed mostly at young, African-American males.  It's an argument that should sound familiar, because it has won the day here in California and made inroads at the Federal level.  Both the California state government and the Federal government have adopted many of the easy fixes that Alexander proposes.   However the deeper cuts of Alexander's arguments expose how (and I say this as someone who supports and agrees with much of what she says) very Un-American the structural underpinnings of her arguments can be.

  I'll share two examples.  The first is the argument that she makes late in the book that the success of Barack Obama and his election as President is harmful to the cause of racial justice because it promotes racial exceptionalism and allows racists to claim that there isn't a race problem in the United States.  Even if Alexander is right, that is a terrible argument to make in support of her many common-sense policy positions.  Can you imagine trying to argue to a swing state voter in suburban Philadelphia or semi-rural Wisconsin that the success of individuals like Barack Obama is a problem that needs to be addressed?  You'd sound like a lunatic.

   The second example is Alexander's lengthy explanation of how the racism of the criminal justice system operates despite the explicit bar to overtly racist laws in the United States.  I'm not saying she's wrong, only that this is a terrible argument that has helped Donald Trump win over potential democratic voters.   It's a bad argument because like many arguments inspired by Marxism, it attempts to convince the listener/reader that the truth is the exact opposite of what the reader believes to be the truth.  It's a heavy tactic in Marxist inspired persuasion that goes right back to the beginning, or close to it, specifically the idea of "false consciousness" i.e. the idea that the duty of Marxist intellectuals to convince the working-class/proletariat that everything they believe about their lives under capitalism is wrong.    Think of how that dovetails with the failed Democratic attempts in the most recent Presidential election to brow-beat swing state voters into fearing Donald Trump as an existential threat to democracy.   Liberal, wealthy democrats telling middle and working class white Americans what to think is never going to win.

  Alexander also obscures a broader, more succesful theme that Trump himself has impressed- which is that law enforcement is petty and vindictive and over-reaches all the time.   This argument is present in Alexander's facts, but she is more interested in the racists implications of over-policing instead of focusing on how over-policing sucks for everyone, poor black guys in the South and Donald Trump as well.  Get the cops off our backs is a winner.

The Tidewater Tales (1987) by John Barth

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Tidewater Tales (1987)

by John Barth

Cheaspeake Bay, Virginia

Virginia: 12/17

  AND I'M BACK!!!!

   This 600 page plus BEHEMOTH of a novel took me over a month to complete.  It really had me thinking about the novel as an artform and the various ways audiences and publishers collaborate to fix the form of a novel.  It also reminded me of the discourse surrounding Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace and whether it might be the worst book ever.  Frankly it is hard to imagine the literary world where this book was launched.  It's about a waspish couple who take their sail boat around the Chesapeake Bay for a couple weeks.  It is loosely structured around the idea of Scheherazade  and 1,001 Nights but it was so tedious trying to really figure what was happening I felt content to just drift along.  There was a lot about the female partner's prior marriage to a would-be Maryland politician.  There were several chapters detailing the travel of various named sperm on a race to fertilize the egg of the female half of the couple on the boat.  There is a sub-plot about the death of a probably CIA operative in the Chesapeake Bay and plenty about the family history of the couple.

    It's a very waspy affair and in that sense it's a welcome break from the middle and working class perspectives of most of the books in this chapter.  Something I took for granted before I started this project was the idea that literary fiction is written from the perspective of literary PEOPLE, now I understand this whole world both of proletarian and middle class fiction where the characters don't give a hoot about books let alone literary culture.