Citizen (2014) by Claudia Rankine

New York Times 100 Best Books of the 21st Century (#34)

Citizen (2014)

by Claudia Rankine

    This is another non-fiction title from the New York Times 100 Best Books of the 21st Century.  I also think it is the ONLY book that is classified as poetry that made the list- which tells you all you need to know about the status of poetry in the literary world in the 21st century.   I listened to the Audiobook and it sounded more like a series of experiences in prose than poetry but maybe the poetry is clearer in print.  The Audiobook was under four hours making it one of the shortest books on the entire list.   My take away from this book was a better understanding of the concept of "microaggressions"- which as a cis white male working as an attorney in a rapidly diversifying legal system- I feel like I need to be aware of in order to be a good professional citizen.  As Rankine makes clear, the line between thoughtlessness and out-and-out racism can be hard to judge, and putting the hearer in that position makes their life difficult.  Citizen is a good example of a book that is useful to read so you don't have to work out your understanding of race based microaggressions with African Americans you know.

  A theme that has come up again and again in the non-fiction portion of the 100 Best 21st Century Books list is that even people who despise racism and consider themselves liberal and or "friends" of the African American people can be just as bad, if not worse than out and out racists.   Another theme from Citizen is that it can be exhausting to be a high-achieving African American who is deputized by the whites around them to be THE African American in all things concerning race.  People don't want to do that- it's exhausting and sucks the life force out of people.   A final theme that stood out is the daily compromises that high achieving minorities have to make simply to exist in certain environments while white people- particularly white men like myself can simply exist.  

  One example I was thinking about both in this book and in Heavy- where the author makes his way in academia, is the idea of the brilliant, disheveled defense attorney- something I've tried to embody in my professional life.  It is literally unthinkable that a latino or African American defense attorney could dress the way I do (carelessly) with little attention to grooming, and have it pass as normal and acceptable behavior.  Similarly for women of all races- the pressure that non white men have to maintain their appearance is ridiculous and terrible. 

The Hunt Club (1998) by Brett Lott

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Hunt Club (1998)

by Brett Lott

Mount Pleasant, South Carolina

South Carolina: 5/14

   The Hunt Club is what you call an interesting failure- half of a conventional thriller about greed and life in South Carolina as seen through the eyes of the 15 year old protagonist and half a work of literary fiction about said 15 year old and his family.   It doesn't really land either punch, but it is short enough and there are enough interesting moments to make it a worthwhile read- certainly within the context of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of American it is a good representative of South Carolina, with plenty of tromping about in the marshy landscape of the area north of Charleston.   One of the things I've learned from this chapter of the 1,001 Novels project is that there are geographical similarities between the low lands of South Carolina and the swampy wetlands of southern New England- at times I feel like the descriptions- here of lowland South Carolina could equally apply to summertime New Hampshire.

  The Hunt Club has several of the worst tropes in thriller/crime fiction including multiple scenes of various villains loudly explaining what they are doing to people they intend to murder in cold blood.  I've never understood it since seeing James Bond villains do it as a child.  So much talking but at least The Hunt Club was short.

Heavy (2018) by Kayise Laymon

 New York Times 100 Best Books of the 21st Century #60

Heavy (2018)

by Kiese Layman

   One thing I love about reading is that it allows you to engage in serious subjects in a thoughtful fashion without having to TALK to anyone else about it.   If someone has an opinion or experience that is important to them they should write it down, preferably as a book, find someone who thinks its worth publishing and then publish it.  The further the experience is from my own, the more value I derive from the reading or listening experience.  I remember when Heavy- a memoir about the life of the author growing up as the precociously intellectual, overweight African American son of an equally intelligent single African-American academic mother in Mississippi and I ignored it because back in 2018 I wasn't particularly interested in what it was like to grow up obese and African-American in Mississippi. 

  In 2024 I found the Audiobook, read by the author, enthralling and the idea that Heavy is simply about being overweight is the descriptive equivalent of saying that Ulysses is about a guy taking a walk in Dublin.  One of the things I've already learned from the non-fiction section of the New York Times 100 Best Books of the 21st Century is the impact that racism and poverty and overall oppression has on the physical bodies of African-American.   This author, who was the child of an extremely well-educated single Mother was not exempted from trauma but in his position as a teacher and author he is able to articulate his experience in a revelatory way.

   One of the points that I've seen again and again both in fiction and non-fiction about the African-American experience is that living in a society that continues to embrace the idea of white supremacy contributes to a deep stoicism in African Americans of all types- that these ideas are internalized and they cause disruptions in the process of developing a coherent self-identity which often leads high-achieving African-Americans into patterns of self-destructive behavior.  

   I thought Heavy was excellent and I'm glad it made this list so I finally compelled to read it.

Ellen Foster (1987) by Kaye Gibbons

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Ellen Foster (1987)

by Kaye Gibbons

Rocky Mount, North Carolina

North Carolina: 11/20

   The caption that 1,001 Novels: A Library of America editor Susan Straight wrote for Ellen Foster says, "In a voice like no other, a young girl tells the story of the dissolution of her family..."  I have to take issue with that statement, since the voice of a young girl in difficult circumstances is the single most prevalent voice in the entire 1,001 Novels project.  Every state has at least one book that could be accurately described the same way, and many of the large states have multiple books that could be described this way.   It's only a mild spoiler to reveal that the name of the book comes from the fact that Ellen, the narrator and protagonist, proudly takes the name of the foster family who takes her in, because she thinks "Foster" is their name, and a generic description.   Ellen describes a childhood that is utterly familiar to me as a result of all the similar books in the 1,001 Novels project:   One dead parent, one absent parent, an immediate family that isn't inclined to help.   Just about the only thing that doesn't happen in this book that a reader might reasonably expect is that the protagonist isn't sexually abused by a relative or friend of the family.    To be fair, she does have a distinctive voice, and it's a good Audiobook because it's just her recounting her history to the reader for the entire book.

Pulphead (2011) by John Jeremiah Sullivan

Audiobook Review

100 Best Books of the 21st Century (New York Times 2024)

Pulphead (2011)

by John Jeremiah Sullivan

  Pulphead by journalist/essayist John Jeremiah Sullivan placed 81st on the New York Times 100 Best Books of the 21st Century list.  It's a good example of how the lack of guidelines that governed the balloting process (the list was picked by a bunch of folks who were just asked to list their 10 best books published between 2000 and the present without specifying what "best" meant).    The first quality of the list that the aseembly process produced is that there are BOTH books of fiction and non-fiction and within both broad categories there are examples of multiple genres- so for fiction there are short story collections, novels and a couple novellas and then for non-fiction there is biography, memoir and books of essays.  Pulphead is a collection of long-form magazine articles that were published in places like the New Yorker and Esquire.  Sullivan is an obviously capable writer who reflects the teachings of "new journalism" (frequent asides about the relationship with the editors paying for his articles and his own presence as a protagonist) as well as the wave of identify based writing that has been in vogue in recent decades.

   Sullivan is a representative of what you might call the upper South- references to Kentucky and North Carolina as "home" and subjects like the Native American caves of the Appalachians and an article about a huge Church-rock fest that discusses his high school flirtation with Evangelical Christianity.    I enjoyed much of Pulphead- his music writing, in particular grabbed me to the point where I again caught myself wondering how I had never heard of Pulphead before the 100 Best Books list.  At the same time it was interesting that this book of magazine articles placed, at all, on this list.  

 If you look at the ballots section of the project very few of the voters placed more than a couple of books on the final list. Some voters didn't pick any of the final 100- James Patterson and Elin Hilderbrand, for example.  At the other end of the spectrum you have Harvard Lit Professor Anette Gordon-Reed, who placed 7 of her 10 picks and had three of the top 10 books.  Author Daniel Alcaron placed 9/10.  Of course, there is a bias towards recency but there seems to be some people who pick only "serious" books and others who defiantly stuck to what is popular.  Overall the serious people did much better than the popular people which suggests that the group definition of "best" has something to do with a traditional definition of literary merit- a challenging book which makes the reader work for a pay-off.