2024 2025 Books
I was reading a huge amount of domestic fiction for the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project, including the 100+ books from New York City and environs. I was really looking for non-fiction titles, so I was stoked when the New York Times published a list of the top 100 titles of the 21st century, with some non-fiction titles on the list. Mostly, that's what I was reading in this period, with some books in translation.
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| Ghanian author Kobby Ben Ben |
No One Dies Yet (2023)
by Kobby Ben Ben
This is a debut novel by an exciting new voice in literature, Ghanian author Kobby Ben Ben. No One Dies Yet was released in the UK last year, but the US edition just dropped. Set in 2019, Ghana's Year of Return, No One Dies Yet is many things at once: A fierce depiction of the difficulties of LGBT life inside Africa, the book culture of social media, a satire of African-Americans and others who arrive as tourists in Ghana expecting a transformative experience no matter the reality/truth of the matter, a wry commentary of the expectations of the western publishing industry as it relates to emerging African voices and a riff on world of literary serial killers/murders found in books like the Talented Mr. Ripley, American Psycho and yes, My Sister the Serial Killer.
No One Dies Yet is both an astute work of literature that can be read on its own terms and a sly work of meta-fiction that provides a cogent critique of the literary world itself and its expectations. I found it to be astonishing, so much so that after reading a library copy on my Kindle I went out and bought the book itself so I could recommend it to friends and acquaintances. I loved everything about No One Dies Yet except the many hot gay sex scenes, but I'm sure many readers would love those bits, and it's not like I disliked them, since they very much relate to the themes of the book and play a significant role therein.
Without belaboring the point, I want to give No One Dies Yet my highest recommendation- check it out for sure!!!
Published 3/24/24
2024 International Booker Prize Longlist
Simpatía by Rodrigo Blanco Calderón, translated by Noel Hernández González and Daniel Hahn
Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Michael Hofmann
The Details by Ia Genberg, translated by Kira Josefsson
White Nights by Urszula Honek, translated by Kate Webster
Mater 2-10 by Hwang Sok-yong, translated by Sora Kim-Russell and Youngjae Josephine Bae
A Dictator Calls by Ismail Kadare, translated by John Hodgson
The Silver Bone by Andrey Kurkov, translated by Boris Dralyuk
What I’d Rather Not Think About by Jente Posthuma, translated by Sarah Timmer Harvey
Lost on Me by Veronica Raimo, translated by Leah Janeczko
The House on Via Gemito by Domenico Starnone, translated by Oonagh Stransky
Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior, translated by Johnny Lorenz
Undiscovered by Gabriela Wiener, translated by Julia Sanches
(Stole this formatting from Lithub)
The 2024 International Booker Prize (translated fiction) longlist dropped two weeks ago and I didn't do a post. I like the International Booker Prize longlist because it's a good source for new literary fiction in translation AND it's the first announcement of the literary prize year. Finding the books in the United States, even in E format, is often a problem, though this year I've already got a line on half the titles. The only author I recognize on the list is Ismail Kadare- who has three titles on the 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die list. He also won the first prize of the predecessor award- the Man Booker International Prize- back in 2005. Dude is 88.
Beyond that- I really have no idea- looking forward to getting into some of these titles ASAP.
Published 4/9/24
2024 International Booker Prize: Shortlist
Not a River by Selva Almada, translated by Annie McDermott
Mater 2-10 by Hwang Sok-yong, translated by Sora Kim-Russell and Youngjae Josephine Bae
What I’d Rather Not Think About by Jente Posthuma, translated by Sarah Timmer Harvey
Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior, translated by Johnny Lorenz
Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Michael Hofmann
The Details by Ia Genberg, translated by Kira Josefsson
Congratulations to the authors, translators and publishers who made the 2024 International Booker Shortlist. I've read three of these books so far- What I'd rather Not Think About, Crooked Plow and The Details. Of those three I'd say The Details is my front runner. I've got Mater 2-10 and Kairos on my Kindle ready to go. I don't believe Not A River is out in the US yet.
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| Western Forces flag from the film Civil War (2024) d. Alex Garland |
Published 4/25/24
Civil War (2024)
d. Alex Garland
I haven't written about movies since I wrapped up my Criterion Collection phase, which lasted a couple years. One of the things that I noticed, writing about movies on my blog, is that so many people have critical opinions about movies that is pointless to try to add something. Contrast this to the considerable paucity of opinions about amazing authors like W.G. Sebald or Thomas Bernhard. The other issue that I noticed writing about movies is that they are such a group production, starting with the planning of the shooting of the film, followed by the actual shooting of the film, followed by the post-shooting production of the film to the marketing and distribution, to write about a movie is not to write about an individual work of art but, largely speaking, a massively capitalized financial endeavor undertaken at the behest of a multi-national corporation.
Rare is the film that inspires me to state an opinion, but Civil War, directed by Alex Garland, is one of those films. I am a huge fan of Garland which largely stems from me learning that he was the author of The Beach before he started working in film. Starting in 2010 he directed a series of films that began to establish him as a significant creative voice- beyond the impact of the writing of The Beach and the film of the book, which he also directed and was released in 2010. In 2014 Ex Machina was released. I didn't see it for years- I think it must have been on Netflix when I finally did, but there is no questioning that it is a really interesting movie. In 2018 he adapted Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer, which didn't perform very well with audiences or critics, but I happen to think it an amazing movie, personally. In 2020 there was season one of Devs, which I watched and enjoyed, again I thought Devs again demonstrated that Garland was working with a distinct, impressive, artistic vision.
Civil War really delivers on this artistic promise in a way that I believe is not being fully appreciated by the discourse, which seems to be driven on either the message or non-message sent by centering the press in the narrative. What the discussion over this artistic decision lacks is the literary context of the story of the film. Garland has crafted a picaresque, or tour of horrors, that relates clearly to artistic antecedents extending to the Odyssey and older. His choice of war photography/journalism as his vehicle is the only option available to him, or anyone else, to tell this story.
Compare the story of a contemporary Civil War to the experience of Goya, who, between 1808 and 1814, toured Spain to document the Napoleonic Invasion in a series of 82 etchings. They are currently on display at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, apparently for the first time ever (?) and I had them in mind when I saw Civil War because I'd visited the museum the day before and seen the exhibition. Goya, following the practice of the time, simply traveled around Spain as a gentleman and took sketches which he then turned into etchings. The etchings are frank and intimate, the war photography of their time. Back then, people can, and often did, set up picnics and viewing parties for battles on nearby hills- it was a practice that extended through the start of the Civil War in the United States, and it was a different mode of warfare.
Garland, seeking to tell a contemporary story, needs contemporary tellers, people present to document the horror. Each scene in Civil War is a different stop on the tour of horrors, meant to illustrate a different aspect of the overall message, which is that war is a horror. There should be no issue regarding what Garland's hidden message is when it is right there in plain sight. That message is enough, and it's a message that has been delivered more or less consistently, interspersed with the opposite opinion, that war is the highest glory of man, for thousands of years.
I can understand why a lay viewer might not LIKE Civil War- there is plenty not to like for a viewer who is just out for a Sunday matinee at the local AMC. My partner, for example, won't even see the film for her (justified and accurate) belief that the violence contained in the film is too much. If you are a viewer looking for a really wide scope battle picture you are going to be disappointed by many of the slow and intimate scenes that largely revolve around dialogue. If you have strong political beliefs of one kind or another you might take issue with what you might think are the hidden sympathies of the filmmaker. These are all valid negative lay opinions about the film as a popcorn, matinee movie at the multiplex.
I can't understand why a critic would say Civil War is anything other than a great movie. I believe every critical review I've surveyed fails to engage with the historical context of the artistic form- picaresque- that Garland is utilizing here. Picaresque is not an art form with a moral imperative, it is from the 18th century and it is meant to simply usher the reader along through the literary equivalent of a series of pictorial engravings. Each scene is Civil War is an actual "scene," the visual equivalent of a moving Goya etching from Los Desastres de la Guerra. If you don't understand that connection from the past to the present, you don't understand the film.
Published 5/1/24
Paul Auster Died!
RIP to Paul Auster! I thought I would compile a post with all of my reviews of his novels- I read all of them in the course of the 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die list, where he was (IMO) dramatically over-represented in the first edition. As anyone could gather from my reviews, I'm not a huge fan- I never have been, probably because I've never been one of those young, white, well-educated guys who thought he would move to NYC. I distinctly remember being in NYC on my own (well, with friends anyway) in college and saying things like, "People who move here are idiots, you should only move to NYC AFTER you have some money or if you ALREADY have money." Thirty years later I stand behind my college-age assessment, NYC is for suckers and it will eat you alive.
My sense is that his status as a canonical author will basically be reduced to the New York Trilogy. He began publishing at at time when the world wasn't particularly concerned with new or distinct voices and thus his relevance was never questioned while he was writing. There is, however, no denying his status as the first Apostle of Hipster Brooklyn- whether that is a good or bad thing is a question best left for others, but on a recent visit earlier this year- my first where I actually stayed in Brooklyn, I thought the Brooklyn that Auster and his ilk have wrought was a pretty fun place.
How many people were inspired by Auster to relocate to Brooklyn? I think that is his ultimate legacy- as a progenitor of hipster Brooklyn.
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| The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster remains relevant and in print- pictured above is an Art Speigelman drawn cover sequence for a recent re-print. |
Published 5/2/17
The New York Trilogy (1987)
by Paul Auster
The New York Trilogy is a collection of three "post-modern detective fiction" novellas, originally written and published separately in 1985 and 1986. There is a limited overlap of characters, but the three novellas are not three separate stories about the same detective, a la Sherlock Holmes. Rather they are three novellas that are thematically similar in that they blend elements of detective fiction with elements of the post-modern philosophical novel that is more often associated with French and German authors in this time period. In any time period, ha ha.
Although Auster was never part of my literary experience, I recognize that The New York Trilogy was and is popular, but I didn't find The New York Trilogy to be earth shattering work. It may not even be the best book about an existentialist influenced detective to be published in 1987, because that is the same year that Douglas Adams published Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.
I'm sure these would have made a bigger impression if I'd read them closer to the original publication date, but 30 years later it just seems like one of any number of self consciously existentialist detective novels.
The New York Trilogy (1987)
by Paul Auster
The New York Trilogy is a collection of three "post-modern detective fiction" novellas, originally written and published separately in 1985 and 1986. There is a limited overlap of characters, but the three novellas are not three separate stories about the same detective, a la Sherlock Holmes. Rather they are three novellas that are thematically similar in that they blend elements of detective fiction with elements of the post-modern philosophical novel that is more often associated with French and German authors in this time period. In any time period, ha ha.
Although Auster was never part of my literary experience, I recognize that The New York Trilogy was and is popular, but I didn't find The New York Trilogy to be earth shattering work. It may not even be the best book about an existentialist influenced detective to be published in 1987, because that is the same year that Douglas Adams published Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.
I'm sure these would have made a bigger impression if I'd read them closer to the original publication date, but 30 years later it just seems like one of any number of self consciously existentialist detective novels.
Published 7/10/17
The Music of Chance (1990)
by Paul Auster
Paul Auster is balls deep on the first edition of the 1001 Books list. I was thinking about Auster while recently reading a book about the formation and maintenance of canons (called Canons), published around the same time as this novel. The trend, in those days, was to oppose canons and critique the process of canon formation, often in the key of "dead, white men." Ultimately, this critique foundered on the realities of institutional pedagogy: One has to teach something in freshman English, but it is this time period which gives us the concepts and vocabulary to accurately describe the canon forming process in the same way that I am attempting to describe it via the 1001 Books project.
Most of the disparate essays in Canons deal with 19th century poetry, but one interesting essay on canon formation for American fiction between 1960 and 1975 makes some interesting empirical observations about what is essentially the current canon forming process. The author's hypothesis is that the best place to start is the best seller list, and that you then overlay the best seller list with critical response- he doesn't differentiate between critical response before best seller status.
If you want to apply this quick and dirty method to say, the current New York Times Hardcover Fiction Bestseller list, you see quick results. Of the 15 titles on this list, nearly half are automatically disqualified because the best-selling author has no critical audience. These are titles by: David Baldacci, Nora Roberts, Michael Crichton, Tom Clancy, Janet Evanovich, Dean Koontz and John Grisham. To the extent that any of these writers are likely to sneak onto any literary canon, it will be with a single, early novel. Almost every other author on the New York Times Hardcover Top 15 Bestseller list can be excluded with a single Google Search: Elin Hilderbrand (writer of summer beach read novels according to her wikipedia page), Paula Hawkins (thrillers), Adriana Trigiani (YA fiction), Don Winslow (Police procedurals), Lee Child (Jack Reacher books).
This leaves us with two possibilities:
1. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy
2. Beach House for Rent by Mary Alice Monroe
Since the list is rolling, you have to imagine doing this maybe 30-40 times over the course of a year, and then toting up points at the end, that would give you your best canonical candidates for fiction. Looking at these two, Arundhati Roy, who ticks all the serious lit boxes AND doesn't write fiction very often, seems like the obvious choice. If you were looking for one book to maintain literary relevance over the summer, it would be the Roy novel, and if you were going to bet on one book from this time period, it would be that one.
Which all goes to say that the inclusion of so many Paul Auster titles on the first 1001 Books list represents another manifestation of this best seller/critical appeal overlay. Auster sells books and he appeals to critics, this makes each of his books, even the non best-selling titles, candidates for canonical inclusion. He, like other artists writing in the "present" benefit from the easy access to pre-canonical "best of" lists, typically organized by year.
The Music of Chance is an interesting novel, like other of his books it blends dark action and European style philosophical musings, with a firm understanding of the role of genre in serious fiction. His books are recognizable but slightly askew, they go down easy, but stay with you over time.
The Music of Chance (1990)
by Paul Auster
Paul Auster is balls deep on the first edition of the 1001 Books list. I was thinking about Auster while recently reading a book about the formation and maintenance of canons (called Canons), published around the same time as this novel. The trend, in those days, was to oppose canons and critique the process of canon formation, often in the key of "dead, white men." Ultimately, this critique foundered on the realities of institutional pedagogy: One has to teach something in freshman English, but it is this time period which gives us the concepts and vocabulary to accurately describe the canon forming process in the same way that I am attempting to describe it via the 1001 Books project.
Most of the disparate essays in Canons deal with 19th century poetry, but one interesting essay on canon formation for American fiction between 1960 and 1975 makes some interesting empirical observations about what is essentially the current canon forming process. The author's hypothesis is that the best place to start is the best seller list, and that you then overlay the best seller list with critical response- he doesn't differentiate between critical response before best seller status.
If you want to apply this quick and dirty method to say, the current New York Times Hardcover Fiction Bestseller list, you see quick results. Of the 15 titles on this list, nearly half are automatically disqualified because the best-selling author has no critical audience. These are titles by: David Baldacci, Nora Roberts, Michael Crichton, Tom Clancy, Janet Evanovich, Dean Koontz and John Grisham. To the extent that any of these writers are likely to sneak onto any literary canon, it will be with a single, early novel. Almost every other author on the New York Times Hardcover Top 15 Bestseller list can be excluded with a single Google Search: Elin Hilderbrand (writer of summer beach read novels according to her wikipedia page), Paula Hawkins (thrillers), Adriana Trigiani (YA fiction), Don Winslow (Police procedurals), Lee Child (Jack Reacher books).
This leaves us with two possibilities:
1. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy
2. Beach House for Rent by Mary Alice Monroe
Since the list is rolling, you have to imagine doing this maybe 30-40 times over the course of a year, and then toting up points at the end, that would give you your best canonical candidates for fiction. Looking at these two, Arundhati Roy, who ticks all the serious lit boxes AND doesn't write fiction very often, seems like the obvious choice. If you were looking for one book to maintain literary relevance over the summer, it would be the Roy novel, and if you were going to bet on one book from this time period, it would be that one.
Which all goes to say that the inclusion of so many Paul Auster titles on the first 1001 Books list represents another manifestation of this best seller/critical appeal overlay. Auster sells books and he appeals to critics, this makes each of his books, even the non best-selling titles, candidates for canonical inclusion. He, like other artists writing in the "present" benefit from the easy access to pre-canonical "best of" lists, typically organized by year.
The Music of Chance is an interesting novel, like other of his books it blends dark action and European style philosophical musings, with a firm understanding of the role of genre in serious fiction. His books are recognizable but slightly askew, they go down easy, but stay with you over time.
Published 10/25/17
Mr. Vertigo (1994)
by Paul Auster
Man, Paul Auster just never stops churning out books combining existentialism, whimsy and memorable characters. Mr. Vertigo is the first Auster joint I've seen that is set in the past- his current book 4 3 2 1 has portions that are set in the past, and this book has a narrator "looking back" from the present, but most of it takes place in the late 20's and early 30's. Walter Rawley is a motherless street urchin living in St. Louis. He randomly meets Master Yehudi, the son of a Hungarian Rabbi, who promises Rawley that he can teach him to fly. Yehudi and Rawley decamp to an isolated farm in Kansas, and a coming of age story ensues.
Again, as you might expect from a Paul Auster novel, Mr. Vertigo is the least whimsical book to revolve around magic that one could possibly imagine. Like all of his books before 4 3 2 1, Mr. Vertigo is short- under 300 pages. It makes for a comically compressed third act, basically all of Rawley's life between the late 1930's and the present, covered in the course of 50 pages. It practically invites the reader to skim, knowing that not much can happen in what remains of the book.
Like other books from this portion of the 1001 Books list, Mr. Vertigo is, at best, a marginal selection. Sure, it's fun- a fun read for an afternoon sitting in an airport departure lobby, but the whole enterprise seems truncated. I think I've made this observation before, but it often feels like Auster isn't trying particularly hard. I don't have a problem with it, but it seems like a consideration that would impact his canonical status, and the extent to which is represented within said canon. I mean one Auster novel a decade, that makes sense to me.
Mr. Vertigo (1994)
by Paul Auster
Man, Paul Auster just never stops churning out books combining existentialism, whimsy and memorable characters. Mr. Vertigo is the first Auster joint I've seen that is set in the past- his current book 4 3 2 1 has portions that are set in the past, and this book has a narrator "looking back" from the present, but most of it takes place in the late 20's and early 30's. Walter Rawley is a motherless street urchin living in St. Louis. He randomly meets Master Yehudi, the son of a Hungarian Rabbi, who promises Rawley that he can teach him to fly. Yehudi and Rawley decamp to an isolated farm in Kansas, and a coming of age story ensues.
Again, as you might expect from a Paul Auster novel, Mr. Vertigo is the least whimsical book to revolve around magic that one could possibly imagine. Like all of his books before 4 3 2 1, Mr. Vertigo is short- under 300 pages. It makes for a comically compressed third act, basically all of Rawley's life between the late 1930's and the present, covered in the course of 50 pages. It practically invites the reader to skim, knowing that not much can happen in what remains of the book.
Like other books from this portion of the 1001 Books list, Mr. Vertigo is, at best, a marginal selection. Sure, it's fun- a fun read for an afternoon sitting in an airport departure lobby, but the whole enterprise seems truncated. I think I've made this observation before, but it often feels like Auster isn't trying particularly hard. I don't have a problem with it, but it seems like a consideration that would impact his canonical status, and the extent to which is represented within said canon. I mean one Auster novel a decade, that makes sense to me.
Published 1/19/18
Timbuktu (1999)by Paul Auster
Timbuktu is the book Paul Auster wrote from the POV of a dog, Mr. Bones, the faithful companion of a colorful hobo who calls himself Willy G. Christmas, despite being the child of Jewish holocaust survivors. Like every Auster novel except 4 3 2 1, Timbuktu is read and done in a blink- under 150 pages, I believe. Timbuktu is one of the first books I've read with a major homeless character portrayed in a complex and sympathetic way. Christmas is no stereotypical hobo. During the course of Timbuktu it is revealed that he was once a promising Columbia University undergraduate, a roommate, in fact, of a writer named Paul Auster. Experimentation with drugs leads to a psychotic break and a life time of wandering, interspersed with winters spent at the home of his long-suffering mother.
It is hard to imagine this as a canonical title- any canon- since Auster is so prolific and already well represented due to his combination of Americanness, commercial viability and critical success. No surprise that Timbuktu was dropped from the 2008 revision of 1001 Books.
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 9/30/17
4 3 2 1 (2017)
by Paul Auster
Is Paul Auster a great American novelist? Sure, that is a loaded question in 2017, does such a thing even exist in 2017? Isn't the whole idea of the great American novelist and the great American novel itself problematic in so much as it invokes the specter of white male class and privilege? Up until the publication of 4 3 2 1 in January of this year, you could argue that Auster himself agreed that there was no point in writing the great American novel- simply judging by his books, which are typically short and elliptical, consciously eschewing the kind of length and solidity that typically coincide with books judged to have a shot at fulfilling the manifest destiny of the great American novel.
If you look at Auster's career up to this point- what have you got? Does he have an Audience- certainly, popular and critical. He's had best sellers, all his books get the full review treatment and he's dabbled in successful films. On the other hand, he's near 30 years into his career as a well regarded novelist and he has yet to back a first level literary prize- No Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, no National Book Award (that seems pretty amazing considering some of the books which have won in the past 30 years). He doesn't even appear in the long odds section of the Ladbrook's 2017 Nobel Prize for Literature betting table.
He's also got a reputation for writing literary genre fiction and a thematic obsession with the vagaries of fate and existentialism- all traits that have helped secure book sales in the English speaking world, but neither of those characteristics have endeared him to the people who hand out major literary prizes.
And as I was saying earlier, before the publication of 4 3 2 1 you could say that Paul Auster hasn't won a major literary award because he isn't trying to win a major award. He just didn't give a fuck, wasn't trying, and was content with his lot as a top selling "serious" author in late 20th and early 21st century America. After all, that's not a bad place to be for a writer of serious fiction.
But 4 3 2 1 changes that analysis, because here he has a written a book that begs to be considered for major literary prizes, and in fact, it has made the 2017 Booker Prize short-list. The current Ladbrook's betting chart has him second to last place at 5/1. The inclusion of 4 3 2 1 on the shortlist was itself the biggest surprise of the 2017 shortlist announcement. It was a surprise because 4 3 2 1 hasn't been particularly well received by critics, and at a very solid 850 pages it is not a light read. It's hard to imagine any casual readers dipping into 4 3 2 1 unless they are die hard Auster fans or they've been told that this is "the" book of the season/year, or a contender for that status. Before the Booker Shortlist announcement, I was of the opinion that 4 3 2 1 was a ridiculously self-indulgent flop by an author who has blown his chance at long-term canonical status.
After reading 4 3 2 1, I want to hail it as a major work- partially because I read the damn 850 pages and saying it is a great book justifies the investment of time. I think an aspect of this book which makes it difficult to judge is the unabashedly retro bildungsroman story of a non-religious male Jew growing up in the New York City in the mid to late 20th century. The meta fictional device that somewhat obscures the retro feel is that Auster tells four different versions of the same life, from birth through young adulthood. Each version is different as it relates the narrator and his personal life, but the "outside world" remains the same in each version. For example, the student unrest at Columbia around the time of the Vietnam War, and the Vietnam War itself, and all major historical events from the time period depicted remain true to "life."
Any cursory survey of the reviews of 4 3 2 1 make it clear that the narrator is a stand in for Auster himself. One important plot point, the sudden death of a friend at summer camp when he was a young adolescent- occurs both in the real life of Paul Auster and in 4 3 2 1. Auster manages to spell the overwhelming white/maleness by making his narrator gay/bisexual in some of his timelines. But still- 4 3 2 1 bears a strong resemblance to the work of Phillip Roth and Saul Bellow. He's moved forward a few decades in time (from Saul Bellow, at least), but the story of a hyper-literate Jewish American growing up in the New York area in the mid to late 20th century is one of the most traversed literary pathways of 20th century literature.
4 3 2 1 is a book written to win literary prizes, so it's ultimate value is likely to be judged by it's ability to bring home said prizes. At least a National Book Award.
4 3 2 1 (2017)
by Paul Auster
Is Paul Auster a great American novelist? Sure, that is a loaded question in 2017, does such a thing even exist in 2017? Isn't the whole idea of the great American novelist and the great American novel itself problematic in so much as it invokes the specter of white male class and privilege? Up until the publication of 4 3 2 1 in January of this year, you could argue that Auster himself agreed that there was no point in writing the great American novel- simply judging by his books, which are typically short and elliptical, consciously eschewing the kind of length and solidity that typically coincide with books judged to have a shot at fulfilling the manifest destiny of the great American novel.
If you look at Auster's career up to this point- what have you got? Does he have an Audience- certainly, popular and critical. He's had best sellers, all his books get the full review treatment and he's dabbled in successful films. On the other hand, he's near 30 years into his career as a well regarded novelist and he has yet to back a first level literary prize- No Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, no National Book Award (that seems pretty amazing considering some of the books which have won in the past 30 years). He doesn't even appear in the long odds section of the Ladbrook's 2017 Nobel Prize for Literature betting table.
He's also got a reputation for writing literary genre fiction and a thematic obsession with the vagaries of fate and existentialism- all traits that have helped secure book sales in the English speaking world, but neither of those characteristics have endeared him to the people who hand out major literary prizes.
And as I was saying earlier, before the publication of 4 3 2 1 you could say that Paul Auster hasn't won a major literary award because he isn't trying to win a major award. He just didn't give a fuck, wasn't trying, and was content with his lot as a top selling "serious" author in late 20th and early 21st century America. After all, that's not a bad place to be for a writer of serious fiction.
But 4 3 2 1 changes that analysis, because here he has a written a book that begs to be considered for major literary prizes, and in fact, it has made the 2017 Booker Prize short-list. The current Ladbrook's betting chart has him second to last place at 5/1. The inclusion of 4 3 2 1 on the shortlist was itself the biggest surprise of the 2017 shortlist announcement. It was a surprise because 4 3 2 1 hasn't been particularly well received by critics, and at a very solid 850 pages it is not a light read. It's hard to imagine any casual readers dipping into 4 3 2 1 unless they are die hard Auster fans or they've been told that this is "the" book of the season/year, or a contender for that status. Before the Booker Shortlist announcement, I was of the opinion that 4 3 2 1 was a ridiculously self-indulgent flop by an author who has blown his chance at long-term canonical status.
After reading 4 3 2 1, I want to hail it as a major work- partially because I read the damn 850 pages and saying it is a great book justifies the investment of time. I think an aspect of this book which makes it difficult to judge is the unabashedly retro bildungsroman story of a non-religious male Jew growing up in the New York City in the mid to late 20th century. The meta fictional device that somewhat obscures the retro feel is that Auster tells four different versions of the same life, from birth through young adulthood. Each version is different as it relates the narrator and his personal life, but the "outside world" remains the same in each version. For example, the student unrest at Columbia around the time of the Vietnam War, and the Vietnam War itself, and all major historical events from the time period depicted remain true to "life."
Any cursory survey of the reviews of 4 3 2 1 make it clear that the narrator is a stand in for Auster himself. One important plot point, the sudden death of a friend at summer camp when he was a young adolescent- occurs both in the real life of Paul Auster and in 4 3 2 1. Auster manages to spell the overwhelming white/maleness by making his narrator gay/bisexual in some of his timelines. But still- 4 3 2 1 bears a strong resemblance to the work of Phillip Roth and Saul Bellow. He's moved forward a few decades in time (from Saul Bellow, at least), but the story of a hyper-literate Jewish American growing up in the New York area in the mid to late 20th century is one of the most traversed literary pathways of 20th century literature.
4 3 2 1 is a book written to win literary prizes, so it's ultimate value is likely to be judged by it's ability to bring home said prizes. At least a National Book Award.
Published 5/14/24
Alice Munro Died!
RIP to Alice Munro, Canadian short-story writer and winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature. I've read one of her books and listened to two Audiobooks- all in 2019. She was one of the most notable omissions from the first edition of the 1,001 Books To Read Before You Die list, which was then corrected in the first revision. Alice Munro has done more for the literary prestige of the short story in the past two decades than any than any other author. For me, personally, she is a key author in developing this idea that the purpose of reading literature is to really familiarize yourself with the perspective of someone you might not have considered in the past. Certainly Munro's landscape of quiet Canadian towns and cities was as foreign to my as any other perspective I've encountered. She also was a master at giving voice to less sophisticated characters in a way that many other writers try and fail to duplicate.
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| Alice Munro, Canadian short story writer and Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature |
Published 1/8/19
Too Much Happiness (2009)
by Alice Munro
One of my major Audiobook "fill" categories is Nobel Prize winners. I thought that all the Nobel Prize in Literature winners would automatically have all their books available in Audiobook format, or at least those who won in the past twenty years. Just to take recent winners- there are no available Audiobooks for 2014 winner Patrick Modiano (French.) This is despite the fact that Modiano's works are typically translated into English and remain in print (they were all on the shelf at a recent visit to Foyle's Books in London.)
BUT- Alice Munro- Canadian Apostle of the Short Story- she won in 2013 (which I did not even know) and ALL of her books are available as Audiobooks. She's got 14 volumes of short stories published between 1968 and 2012, and then there are a handful of separate compilations. I selected Too Much Happiness, more or less randomly, because it was published shortly before she won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and I'm of the opinion that the Nobel Prize prefers to give the award to Authors who are still doing their best work.
I think the Audiobook and the short story go well together, in the same way that the novel really fits the paperback/hardback physical book format. It's easy to dip in and out of an Audiobook, vs when I read a physical book, I don't like to reset my attention frame every half hour. Munro's Wikipedia tag line is that she revolutionized the architecture of the short story, especially the tendency to move backward and forward in time. That last clause really resonates with me, "the tendency to move backward and forward in time," which has to be one of the techniques of writers that I most frequently call out after reading an entry on the 1001 Books list. It's a technique I associate with the novel, specifically with the high modernists, though by mid century it was making it's way in the mainline literature.
It strikes me that Munro has an incredibly low profile for the first North American to win the Nobel in Literature since Toni Morrison won a decade earlier. I guess that win is reflected in the availability of her books in Audiobook format, but I'd be hard pressed to name a single person I've ever met who has read her, let alone would name Munro as one of their favorite authors.
Of course, I'm not going to trash a collection of Munro short stories, but like all short story collections I'm left grasping at a sold critical approach. Talk about themes? Individual stories? All of the stories are set in contemporary Canada except for the title story, about an 19th century Russian mathematician who was the first woman to teach in Sweden (Nobel Prize committee catnip, no doubt.)
I listened to Too Much Happiness in a variety of circumstances- it took me 40 days to get through the 11 hours. Some of Munro's protagonists are men, most are women. Domestic relationships gone wrong feature strongly in several of the stories in this collection. Too Much Happiness is another beast entirely- I wonder if it could be a novella, it seemed long enough on it's own. I happened to be flying back from Iceland when I listened to most of Too Much Happiness, and I thought the Russian/Scandinavian angle was particularly well thought out and clever.
Too Much Happiness (2009)
by Alice Munro
One of my major Audiobook "fill" categories is Nobel Prize winners. I thought that all the Nobel Prize in Literature winners would automatically have all their books available in Audiobook format, or at least those who won in the past twenty years. Just to take recent winners- there are no available Audiobooks for 2014 winner Patrick Modiano (French.) This is despite the fact that Modiano's works are typically translated into English and remain in print (they were all on the shelf at a recent visit to Foyle's Books in London.)
BUT- Alice Munro- Canadian Apostle of the Short Story- she won in 2013 (which I did not even know) and ALL of her books are available as Audiobooks. She's got 14 volumes of short stories published between 1968 and 2012, and then there are a handful of separate compilations. I selected Too Much Happiness, more or less randomly, because it was published shortly before she won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and I'm of the opinion that the Nobel Prize prefers to give the award to Authors who are still doing their best work.
I think the Audiobook and the short story go well together, in the same way that the novel really fits the paperback/hardback physical book format. It's easy to dip in and out of an Audiobook, vs when I read a physical book, I don't like to reset my attention frame every half hour. Munro's Wikipedia tag line is that she revolutionized the architecture of the short story, especially the tendency to move backward and forward in time. That last clause really resonates with me, "the tendency to move backward and forward in time," which has to be one of the techniques of writers that I most frequently call out after reading an entry on the 1001 Books list. It's a technique I associate with the novel, specifically with the high modernists, though by mid century it was making it's way in the mainline literature.
It strikes me that Munro has an incredibly low profile for the first North American to win the Nobel in Literature since Toni Morrison won a decade earlier. I guess that win is reflected in the availability of her books in Audiobook format, but I'd be hard pressed to name a single person I've ever met who has read her, let alone would name Munro as one of their favorite authors.
Of course, I'm not going to trash a collection of Munro short stories, but like all short story collections I'm left grasping at a sold critical approach. Talk about themes? Individual stories? All of the stories are set in contemporary Canada except for the title story, about an 19th century Russian mathematician who was the first woman to teach in Sweden (Nobel Prize committee catnip, no doubt.)
I listened to Too Much Happiness in a variety of circumstances- it took me 40 days to get through the 11 hours. Some of Munro's protagonists are men, most are women. Domestic relationships gone wrong feature strongly in several of the stories in this collection. Too Much Happiness is another beast entirely- I wonder if it could be a novella, it seemed long enough on it's own. I happened to be flying back from Iceland when I listened to most of Too Much Happiness, and I thought the Russian/Scandinavian angle was particularly well thought out and clever.
Published 3/28/19
Runaway (2004)
by Alice Munro
I like these characteristics of Canadian author Alice Munro, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2013: First, all her Audiobooks are available without a wait in the Public Library Libby Audiobook app. Second, all her books are short stories, so listening to one of her books never requires a huge listening effort. What I don't like about Munro would be her limited range, at least from what I've seen in two books, as described by the Wikipedia page for this book:
There are eight short stories in the book. Three of the stories ("Chance", "Soon", and "Silence") are about a single character named "Juliet Henderson".
Runaway (2004)
by Alice Munro
I like these characteristics of Canadian author Alice Munro, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2013: First, all her Audiobooks are available without a wait in the Public Library Libby Audiobook app. Second, all her books are short stories, so listening to one of her books never requires a huge listening effort. What I don't like about Munro would be her limited range, at least from what I've seen in two books, as described by the Wikipedia page for this book:
There are eight short stories in the book. Three of the stories ("Chance", "Soon", and "Silence") are about a single character named "Juliet Henderson".
"Runaway" – a woman is trapped in a bad marriage.
"Chance" – Juliet takes a train trip which leads to an affair.
"Soon" – Juliet visits her parents with her child Penelope.
"Silence" – Juliet hopes for news from her adult estranged daughter Penelope.
"Passion" – A lonely small town girl flees a passionless relationship with an outsider.
"Trespasses" – Lauren, a young girl, meets an older woman, Delphine, who is too interested in her.
"Tricks" – Robin, a lonely girl, lives life alone due to bad luck and misinterpretation.
I mean there you have it, Alice Munro in a nutshell. Every story is about women on the margins of society for various reasons, isolated by domestic violence, mental illness or just plain bad luck.
Published 12/2/19
The Beggar Maid (1978)
by Alice Munro
Replaces: A Maggot by John Fowles
Canadian short-story specialist Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize in 2013, five years after the first revision of the 1001 Books list, where she was included (2 books) for the first time. Her omission from the original edition is a minor embarrassment- especially when you look at the over representation of other recent Nobel winners like J.M. Coetzee. Munro was awarded her Nobel for being a "contemporary master of the short story," but The Beggar Maid is as close as she gets to a Novel. Indeed, a reader could be forgiven for thinking (as I did while listening to the Audiobook) that The Beggar Maid is a novel, since every story is about the same woman- Rose, and the episodes proceed in largely chronological order over the course of her lifetime.
Like many of Munro's protagonists, Rose is a woman from a disadvantaged socio-economic background in rural Canada who transcends her origins but faces difficult choices along the way. The Beggar Maid replaces A Maggot by John Fowles- a post-modernist metahistorical fiction that confuses as much as it entertains, and Fowles himself is a marginally canonical figure if you look at 21st literary trends. He scores a fat zero for diversity purposes, and his literary reputation is less secure then his (strong) sales record and continued presence in international book stores.
The Beggar Maid (1978)
by Alice Munro
Replaces: A Maggot by John Fowles
Canadian short-story specialist Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize in 2013, five years after the first revision of the 1001 Books list, where she was included (2 books) for the first time. Her omission from the original edition is a minor embarrassment- especially when you look at the over representation of other recent Nobel winners like J.M. Coetzee. Munro was awarded her Nobel for being a "contemporary master of the short story," but The Beggar Maid is as close as she gets to a Novel. Indeed, a reader could be forgiven for thinking (as I did while listening to the Audiobook) that The Beggar Maid is a novel, since every story is about the same woman- Rose, and the episodes proceed in largely chronological order over the course of her lifetime.
Like many of Munro's protagonists, Rose is a woman from a disadvantaged socio-economic background in rural Canada who transcends her origins but faces difficult choices along the way. The Beggar Maid replaces A Maggot by John Fowles- a post-modernist metahistorical fiction that confuses as much as it entertains, and Fowles himself is a marginally canonical figure if you look at 21st literary trends. He scores a fat zero for diversity purposes, and his literary reputation is less secure then his (strong) sales record and continued presence in international book stores.
Published 8/27/24
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments (2019)
by Sadiya Hartman
New York Times Best Books of the 21st Century, 96
When the New York Times published their Best Books of the 21st Century last month I was excited to see that they had both Fiction and Non-Fiction, books in translation and books in English and books by both non-American and American authors. To often lists like this are parochial- "Best American Novels of the 21st Century," for example or they are perversely limited to one TYPE of book- usually the novel, to the exclusion of other forms of literature. The New York Times list isn't flawless- there is little or no representation of poetry- but overall it's a good mix of fiction and non-fiction, foreign and domestic. I've read most of the fiction titles but few of the non-fiction picks.
Hartman writes about the lives of so-called "wayward women" of the American urban core in the early 20th century- almost entirely focusing on African-American women who were judged by the system to be dangerous enough to be sent away to a reformatory for up to three years at a stretch for crimes like having a child out of wedlock or just being in the wrong place at the wrong time coming home from work. Hartman blends the non-fiction of facts she has gleaned from 20th century court documents with fictionalizations of the women from those documents.
As Hartman repeatedly points out, the oppression in these pages is not hypothetical, but represents decades of actual lives ruined in the name of social progress. Almost of all the court proceedings she discusses took place without the women being represented by anyone- a lawyer, a social worker, and truly once you were taken into the system, a place would be made for you. Hartman also convincingly makes the point that many of these women were the direct inspiration for the American popular culture that emerged from the jazz age. Women like Zelda Fitzgerald became immortal icons, while the black-girls who inspired her went to the reformatory (and Zelda also got institutionalized, let's not forget.)
Published 11/12/24
Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom (2018)
by David W. Blight
Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight is another pick from the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century by the New York Time (#86). I'm also looking for non-fiction titles to round out my fiction heavy reading list, and the Times list has plenty of non fiction titles. Even within the non fiction world, "great man" biographies aren't my favorite, but Frederick Douglass strikes me as a worthy candidate, since he is the first African-American, chronologically speaking, who would merit this treatment under any "great man" type theory of history. This is as compared to the "ordinary man"/annales school of history which focuses on normal folks, in which case there are many possible candidates for the honor.
I knew nothing about Douglass beyond the bare biographical details of his life: Born a slave in Western Maryland, he learned to read and write at a young age and then fled slavery to the north as a young man, where he became known as a strong and urgent voice for the end of slavery. As the book reveals, he spent most of his life on lecture tours although in the post Civil War era he assumed several government positions, including being the US Marshall for Washington DC and as an envoy to Haiti- the only sinecure for African-American diplomats in the world at the time. The Audiobook runs 36 hours, and it is easy to imagine the exact same story as a work of fiction- any individual who charts a career path as an "orator" as Douglass did- in an era before amplification of the human voice- is bound to have a flair for the dramatic in his personal and professional life.
For most of his life- and certainly the early pre-Civil War part, Douglass worked closely with white abolitionists, who were both his sponsors and his audience. These relationships were often fraught with issues of financial dependency, and it's hard to not to see Douglass' desire to emancipate both African-American slaves AND himself from white partners as a double theme of the book through the end of the civil war. Beyond his work as an advocate, Douglass was one of the first (the first?) African-Americans to travel the world (American and Europe anyway) and his biography also does justice to those impressions. For example, there are at least a dozen descriptions of Douglass encountering racial segregation on trains and boats- including the detail that when he was appointed as the American envoy to Haiti he had to find a new ship to take because the captain of the first ship refused to transport blacks and whites together.
After the Civil War, Douglass' legacy is a mixed bag: He was there when the Freedman's Bank- a post Civil War financial institution designed to help newly freed slaves obtain financial independence- collapsed, taking the savings of many of its (black) patrons. He also advocated for the annexation of Haiti and other Caribbean and Central American polities and generally served as an apologist/advocate for American colonization. Finally, after his long suffering wife died, Douglass married a white lady. which, again, was close to being a unique circumstance at the time.
His family doesn't come off particularly well. Douglass felt a strong obligation to support his children and their children, but none them amounted to anything, and a few were out and out failures.
Published 12/2/24
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.
Published 12/4/24
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.
Published 12/6/24
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.
Published 12/10/24
New York Times 100 Best Books of the 21st Century(#55)
The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (2006)
by Richard Wright
The Looming Tower is a non-fiction account of the "road to 9-11." It landed at #55 on the New York Times 100 Best Books of the 21st Century list and unsurprisingly it isn't a very popular Audiobook. I did find the story interesting, specifically the way Al-Qaeda arose from a bunch of stuff that had literally nothing to do with the United States- the Egyptian repression of Islamists that led to the further radicalization of the incarcerated, the history of Saudi Arabia and the role of Bin Laden's dad in developing the infrastructure of that country and of course the fervent US support of the very same Jihadis who became our worst enemies after 9/11 but were our friends during the war in Afghanistan.
Another theme that emerges is just how kooky Bin Laden and his obsession with hitting the United States were in the context of the global movement for jihad. Many of Bin Laden's own people thought he was out to lunch and other US targets: The Taliban and Saddam Hussein to name two, were only peripherally involved and on-board with Bin Laden's dramatic plans. The other side of the coin is Wright's investigation of the failure of United States intelligence to disrupt and prevent 9/11. Here, I was reading as a criminal defense attorney who knows a lot about law enforcement and I finished The Looming Tower with the conviction that, yes, more could have been done particularly in the area of collaboration between the FBI and CIA which was prevented for some reason I still don't understand. On the other hand, it's hard to prevent an attack that no one had even conceptualized before it happened. Wright is able to point to scattered foreshadowing but there really was very little to hone on before the attacks occurred.
Published 1/7/25
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.
Published 1/27/25
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.
Published 1/28/25
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.
Published 1/29/25
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.
Published 2/3/25
Audiobook ReviewLanguage 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.
Published 2/5/25
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)
Published 2/6/25
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.
Published 2/12/25
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.
Published 2/20/25
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.
Published 2/24/25
Gliff (2025)
by Ali Smith
I try to keep up with Scottish author Ali Smith. She is both highly regarded in the literary world, with a slew of Booker shortlisting's (2001, 2005, 2014 and 2016) and shelf full with minor literary awards. Smith is prolific for a writer of literary fiction, averaging a new book every couple of years. I skipped her four volume cycle about the seasons- my least favorite literary motif, it slightly clips "the difficulties of young motherhood" in that department. I did, however, pick-up Gliff, her latest, since it promised a post-apocalyptic milieu (yay!) seen through the eyes of a child (sigh). The 1,001 Novels: A Library of America has pumped so full of YA lit and adult books written from the perspective of a child that I've developed a cogent body of criticisms regarding these books and their motifs.
Specifically, these books (YA books and those adult books written from the perspective of children) feature narrators and protagonists who can't go anywhere and can't do anything, and most every book that fits this description involves a child or "young adult" who is stuck somewhere and can't do anything about it but wants to "get out." The book is then about whether they escape their sad surroundings or fail to do so and why.
Gliff fits this description- the characters are a pair of siblings, the protagonist is the elder sibling, a boy, who have been rendered "unverifiable"- the dystopian/novel equivalent of being an illegal alien in this future.. England? Scotland? Unverifiability has nothing to do with race or immigration status, but seems to have been applied to everyone who broadly disagrees with the current government. Unlike most YA titles, the language in Gliff is interesting- I found myself looking up words and phrases online, trying to make sense of what Smith was talking about. At least, in this way, Smith has created a work far different than the usual simple-minded YA dystopian tropes. However, in another, more important (for this reader anyway) Smith has done nothing unusual in her plotting, which made me wonder whether she is trying for some kind of commercial success with Gliff- a book for the punters, in her mind, perhaps.
Having read the book, I don't know.
Published 2/25/25
Season of the Swamp (2024)
by Yuri Herrera
Translated by Lisa Dillman
I checked out the e-book edition of Season of the Swamp by Mexican author Yuri Herrera based on the New York Times description- not necessarily the review, which was mixed, but the description, which promised a book about Mexican nationalist leader Benito Juarez and his time in exile in New Orleans- of all places- a time about which he spoke little and truly is one of those historical episodes which provides a nucleus for a potentially great work of fiction. I read it a while back but wasn't compared to write this post until I saw this book was named as a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize "best fiction" category, alongside James by Percival Everett, All Fours by Miranda July, Headshot by Rita Bullwinkle and Say Hello to My Little Friend by Jennine Capo Crucet.
As it turns out, Juarez doesn't get up to much in New Orleans, which is why the LA Times nomination surprised me, surely "something happens" is a prerequisite for a best-book of the year award. Here, little happens except Juarez experiencing various aspects of life in New Orleans with his buddies. The character of Juarez is of course sensitive to the vagaries of race in ante-bellum New Orleans. He was the first indigenous President of a North American country and at several points he or a companion is forced to explain to an on-looker that Juarez is not "just" an Indian (in the parlance of the times). Despite being set in the mid 19th century, Juarez has all the characteristics of a modernist artist-in-exile character and if you had told me Season of the Swamp had been set in the early 20th century I might not have been able to tell the difference.
Published 2/26/25
Audiobook Review
The Ways of the Wolf (2017)
by James Carlos Blake
The New York Times obituary for noir/crime writer James Carlos Blake caught by attention by not only comparing him to Cormac McCarthy but also by using this sub-header: "His savage fiction, set in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, demonstrated his belief that “violence is the most elemental truth of life." The fact that I'd never heard of him despite being a huge fan or McCarthy and decently well-versed in the world of crime fiction through friends & acquaintances is yet another example of how useful the New York Times obituary section can be for picking up new books to read. Since he was a genre writer I thought I'd look for an Audiobook but the only library available audiobook was the fifth volume in his Wolf family saga, about an Anglo-Texas cross-border family immersed in "the shade trade"- mostly selling guns to cartels as far as I can tell.
Anyway, since I heard about Blake from a New York Times obituary, I'm not going to act like I'm on to anything here. I'm surprised there aren't Audiobooks available for all his titles. I'm def going to look for his actual books when I am bookstores going forward.
Published 2/28/25
Out in the Open (2017)
by Jesus Carrasco
Translated by Margaret Jill Costa
I found this book via the Libby library app via the "other books like this one" feature, which is especially useful if you are reading a type of book and want to read other books like it but don't know much about that area. Here, I was reading another book translated from Spanish and Out in the Open popped up. The story is about a child fleeing an abusive situation in an isolated environment. I had in mind the desert southwest or northern Mexico, though there are no place names or even personal names to help pin down the location or specific environment. It's bleak, to be sure, but to call it "dystopian" as does the libby editorial copy seems a bit much. Not every child wandering around in a featureless desert is living in a dystopia.
Published 3/6/25
Audiobook Review
The Lost Steps (1953)
by Alejo Carpentier
I read about The Lost Steps in Stranger Than Fiction by Edwin Frank- a book about the life of the 20th century novel. The Lost Steps struck me as interesting- a pre/proto-magical realism work of Latin American fiction, about a guy living in an American city (New York?) who is dispatched by a museum to the wilds of Brazil to locate the "oldest instruments" in the western hemisphere. Fortunately, Penguin just published a new translation (2023) done by Adrian Nathan West, who also translated the excellent book by Benjamin Labatut, When We Cease to Understand the World. AND Penguin also did an Audiobook version, which is what I checked out from the library.
I thought there were many memorable passages in The Lost Steps, and I enjoyed this book start to finish. The protagonist is a frustrated composer working in advertising and he has a very existentialist vibe. His adventures in Brazil are fun and the author and the protagonist stay away from racist proclamations about the indigenous Brazilians they encounter, which is welcome for a book from 1953. Particularly memorable were his rhapsodic, Proustian passages about his relationship with music- again, unusual for fiction published in the early 1950's. The Lost Steps maintained a modern feeling from start to finish and fans of Latin American lit from the first Golden Age should give this book a chance.
Published 3/7/25
The Watermark (2025)
by Sam Mills
I read about this book in the Guardian and it looked interesting so I checked out the E-edition from the library. Sad to find out at the end that the print version has a "graphic novel" section that is simply translated into prose in the E-book. Ultimately though I found the mechanics of the plot more interesting than the book itself, about two modern-day star-crossed lovers (a low achieving, well educated hipster and his morose artist girlfriend/soulmate) who are entrapped by a writer of literary fiction by use of a tea to become characters in his, and others, books. While I won't be thinking about the characters or what happened in the book, the idea of these people being trapped as characters in a series of different novels, written by different authors, was really interesting and I can't remember reading anything along these lines that took it through so many levels- for a literary Inception type impact on the reader. I wish the characters themselves were more interesting but five stars for the idea.
Published 3/17/25
The Unworthy (2025)
by Agustina Bazterrica
I was excited for his novel by Bazterrica, author of the excellent Tender is the Flesh and a slightly less excellent but still very good collection of short stories. The description had me drooling- promising a tale that combined dystopic lit and religious obsession. To be fair, Bazterrica does indeed deliver on the promise, but in extremely minimal fashion, at 192 pages The Unworthy is in line with other recent works of literary fiction- short is in, unless it's an extremely long book, but I really wanted more. The whole deal here is that this one of those books where the protagonist is keeping a journal a la Anne Frank- which, honestly, came to mind more than once while I was reading The Unworthy, it's a technique that goes hand-in-hand with the development of the novel as an art form- Pamela, by Samuel Richardson, one of the first novels was an epistolary novel. In that sense, it works that this book is so short, it's hard to imagine this protagonist getting deep into details when she is writing with ink she makes out of mashed up bugs. Mashed up bugs, in fact, feature prominently, with the girls in the novel subsisting largely on a diet of crickets. Not ground up cricket protein powder but actual crickets. Ultimately, I thought The Unworthy was good but it didn't live up to my perhaps unrealistic expectations.
Published 2/21/25
Audiobook Review
Between the World and Me (2015)
by Ta-Nehisi Coates
100 Best Books of the 21st Century (New York Times): #36
My tour through the non-fiction picks on the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century by the New York Times continues with #36, Between the World and Me by journalist/author Ta-Nehisi Coates. It reminded me very much of another book on this list, Citizen by Claudia Rankine (#34). Both books are first-person works of non-fiction about the experience of being an "African-American body" and the daily threats that such a person faces. I found value in both books, even though my career as a criminal defense attorney has afforded me many moments of contemplation over the impact of the criminal justice system on the bodies of its subjects. At the same time, I feel like the adulation of books like this one as well as Citizen have something to do with the fact that Donald Trump won a second term as President.
If you assume that the New York Times Best Books of the 21st Century represents, broadly, the Democratic perspective on the world, you might also look for ideas as to where they/we went wrong in convincing normal Americans to support "the good guys." My thought, after reading both Between the World and Citizen, is that Democrats/the left, spends their time lambasting the grievance/identity based politics of the right, while at the same time elevating voices from the left with the exact same perspective. What are books like Between the World and Me and Citizen if they are not both based on grievances (justified, sure) and identity.
At the same time, personally, outside of the context of national politics, the African American non-fiction section of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century list has really given me thought about how hostile an environment the day-to-day experience of living in this country is for any human being with black skin.
Published 3/19/25
Victorian Psycho (2025)
by Virginia Feito
I swear the E-book edition I checked out from the library managed to inform me that this book was already set to become "a major motion picture featuring Margaret Qualley" which seems almost impossible considering it just got released in the UK and hasn't yet been published over here, but such is the way of publishing rights- they can be sold before the book is even written- a la the Godfather by Mario Puzo which was under contract for a movie before Puzo ever set pen to paper. Victorian Psycho is pretty much what the title promises, a Victorian-era riff on American Psycho with the nepo baby Investment Banker replaced by a Victorian governess. What Victorian Psycho sadly lacks is any sort of narrative ambition, we learn, yes, that the Governess has had a difficult upbringing (who didn't, back then?) The violent bits aren't particularly memorable. The supporting cast, aka the wealthy family who hires this lady to work with them, are little more than collections of narrative conventions about the Victorians. In short, I was underwhelmed. I will be interested to see the film.
Published 3/27/25
100 Best Books of the 21st Century- New York Times
The Argonauts (2015)
by Maggie Nelson
#45
The Non-fiction portion of the New York Times 1001 Best Books of the 21st Century list should be subtitled, "How the Left Lost the Culture War," because all of these titles celebrate and draw attention to diversity, and different types of diversity, and it is exactly what the right is targeting when the eliminate "DEI" initiatives. I've written on this blog about the importance I place on diversity and different viewpoints, and while I personally adhere to that view, it's also hard not to see things from the other side, particularly since the other side is in power and is doing whatever they want in that department.
And of course, Maggie Nelson, is no doubt appalled beyond belief by Trump and Trumpism, although there are elements of her reference points which might suggest a post-modern-like joy at the bare face of evil power as it relates to issues like transgenderism and queerness generally. At the same time, Nelson: a queer, sex positive lesbian in a relationship with a f2m/genderfluid artist (Harry Dodge), writing a book about motherhood and sexuality, is like, exhibit "A" in what the right has SUCCESFULLY critiqued about the left.
I imagine a member of the MAGA movement would read three pages of The Argonauts and as dismiss it as deviant trash, and it is the book that the New York Times represents as the 45th best book of this century. Good for Nelson, Good for the Times, bad for the left and bad for the electoral potential of the Democrats in the middle of the 21st century.
Published 3/31/25
Oromay (1983)
by Baalu Girma
Oromay is an Amharic language novel written by a member of the Ethiopian Communist elite circa 1980. It proved, let us say, controversial in his native Ethiopia, where the Communist Derg were not known for their sense of humor, and where Girma was allegedly murdered by said Communist government of which he was a member. Easy come, easy go! Oromay is about the lengthy, unsuccessful and ultimately pointless war between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Historically, Eritrea was a province of the Ethiopian empire, and independence was tied to the Italian colonization of the area (the title of the novel is an Ethiopianisation of an Italian expression), but it was basically a decades long civil war that Ethiopia eventually lost.
In this particular book, Girma covers one unsuccessful campaign among what had to be dozens, and adds an interesting entry to the shelf of books set in 20th century Communist dictatorships. Honestly, the Ethiopian Communists don't sound half bad, so far as books like this one go.
Published 4/2/25
100 Best Books of the 21st Century: New York Times
Nickel and Dimed (2001)
by Barbara Ehrenreich
#57
I actually remember the release of this book- I was surprised to find out it happened in the 21st century. For me, one of the consequences of the rise of Trump has been a corresponding decline in the empathy in the real people depicted by Ehrenreich in this book: white, minimum-wage, poorly educated, with a myriad of health and housing issues. These are, of course, Trump voters and it's hard for me to muster any kind of enthusiasm for their plight. Ehrenreich spends each chapter in a different chapter: She starts in Florida, working in a restaurant and briefly, in a motel. Then she moves to Maine- where she cleans houses in and around Portland. She ends up in Minneapolis working in Walmart where she reveals that it was essentially impossible for her to get by on a minimum wage salary.
In 2025, it is hard to imagine that anyone would feel bad for these future Trump supporters. Ehrenreich is careful to keep her depictions positive- you don't hear any racist slurs or witness any of the kind of disgusting (spitting in customers food) type behavior that makes me reluctant to even eat at many sit down chain restaurants.
It's also worth noting that 25 years on and after eight years of Obama and four of Biden, no one has done anything to help these folks except by raising the minimum wage. It occurs to me that the best solution might be to hand the kitchen work and house cleaning over to robots and pay folks who can't hack it some kind of minimum amount of money to provide for food and housing. The cost of shitty housing is one facet of Ehrenreich's poor people cos-play that stood out to me- because 25 years later it is still true. Poor people often end up spending as much as a mortgage payment to stay by the day and week at SRO type motels and other temporary living arrangements which become permanent.
Surely, the need to provide more affordable housing options (or workforce housing, as they call it in some parts of the country) is a solution that all can agree upon.
Published 4/9/25
Audiobook Review
Moon of the Crusted Snow (2018)
by Waubeshig Rice
I think I discovered this book via the "recommended" tab in the Libby library app- which is pretty good if you are reading books in translation or literary fiction. Moon of the Crusted Snow is a typical end of the world type book with the exception of the perspective, which is that of a Anishinabbe community living in northern Canada (not far northern Canada, just regular.) The protagonist is Evan Whitesky, a regular joe type who lives and works in his native village, a place relatively recently connected to the modern world via the wonders of the internet and power from a nearby hydroelectric project. Evan and his tribe/band first know something is wrong when the cable goes out, then the power. Winter is setting in, and deliveries from the outside world have ceased, when confirmation finally arrives from two residents attending college in the nearest patch of so-called "Civilization."
Of all the many works of post-apocalyptic fiction I've read, I would be hard pressed to name another volume that is so low-stakes. One of the funniest moments in the entire book comes when one of the village elders asks Whitesky to explain this term "apocalypse" means that the young people are bandying about, and when he defines it, she laughs and says that her people/his people have been through at least two others, the first when they were moved north, the second when the Canadians took their children away to Indian schools.
Danger arrives in the form of a white survivalist/homesteader type who follows the tracks of the returning college students, and the drama is in the form of the dwindling food reserves the tribe has socked away for just such an occasion.
Published 4/21/25
New York Times
100 Best Books of the 21st Century
Far From the Tree (2012)
by Andrew Solomon
#67
This is a 41 hour Audiobook. I have been trying to get through it since November 20th of last year. I finally finished a couple days. Four separate check-outs. Truly a beast of an Audiobook and depressing as hell, but I totally get while it was included. Solomon, known for his journalism and his memoir about depression tackles this project charting societal attitudes towards "children who are different than their parents" with characteristic ambition. Each chapter was an average of eight hours. He covers deafness, dwarfs. down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, disability, prodigies, rape, criminals and transgenders with book-ending chapters about his own experience growing up gay and later experience as a gay dad of a very modern family.
As Solomon repeatedly acknowledges, his sample is limited by parents of these different sorts of children and the children themselves who want to sit down to extensive interviews with a nosy journalist asking all sorts of extremely private questions. Solomon is right on top of his major theme: Which is that even allowing for the need of humans to find meaning in cruel fate, parents of these children are by in large grateful for their experience. One group that was noticeably, noticeably absent from every single chapter of this book was any input from the "normal" siblings of the subjects of this book. As one of those siblings, and a reader of this book, I was astonished how every chapter featured the parents DESCRIBING how the normal siblings felt or what they thought they felt, but that almost none of them actually were asked anything.
One of the justifications, traditionally, for warehousing children in these various categories was that it would have a negative impact on the "normal" siblings, which means that in each chapter that viewpoint is explicitly ruled out and ignored. In some chapters it makes sense- I would hope and expect the hearing and normal sized siblings of the deaf and dwarves would be able to make a go of it. The next four chapters: down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia and disability- which means basically vegetables, could have used some perspectives from the children in these families who have to watch their parent's lives irrevocably altered and generally ruined. Of course, the parents can and do need to come to terms with it, but I would have liked to hear how out that ceaseless attention impacted the later lives of the siblings.
The chapter on Prodigies is a clear outlier in that Prodigies carries a positive connotation, but paradoxically this is the one chapter where the parents often come off as manipulative and selfish. The last three chapters- rape, criminals and transgender were almost impossibly cruel in their details. I think actually the transgender chapter was the hardest of all- hearing from parents who'd had their whole world destroyed because they lived in a small town and had a child who decided He wanted to be a She at a young age. Published in 2012, I was still frequently shocked by the treatment experienced by the transgender families with young kids. I certainly won't forget Far From the Tree.
Published 5/2/25
The Top 100 Books of the 21st Century: New York Times
Say Nothing:
A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland (2018)
by Patrick Radden Keefe
#19
I visited Belfast over the Christmas/New Years Holiday period last year. While I was there, I took a "black cab" tour where a local takes you on a tour of both sides of Belfast- Catholic and Protestant. You see plenty of murals, and it's clear that conflict by proxy continues- the Catholic side is filled with Palestinian flags and the Protestant side with Israeli flags. Keefe's account of the "troubles" which is a period in Northern Ireland history that generally corresponds to the time between the 1960's and the dawn of the Good Friday agreement signed in 1998, has been hailed as a classic, and its inclusion on the Top 100 Books of the 21st Century- I think as the only non-American history book on the list... and the recent Hulu television version.
I listened to the Audio book, and it works well in that format, since much of the writing seems to come from transcribed interviews. The major narrative thrust beyond documenting the historical facts involved (from the perspective of the Catholic side) involves the fate of a handful of "disappeared" including a single mother of seven children- Keefe's desire to "solve" these disappearances is the tension-inducing narrative device that elevates Say Nothing above an ambitious oral history.
Published 5/12/25
Audiobook Review
Hunchback (2025)
by Saou Ichikawa
Translation by Polly Barton
It's been a slow year for literary fiction- compared to last year- by this point in 2024 I'd read 14 books published in the current year. This year the comparable number of books is four, and none of them were particularly memorable. Thus, Hunchback arrived as a minor revelation, a book which boldly does what fiction ought to do- generate empathy and understanding for a point of view which has been previously neglected or ignored. Ichikawa, who suffers from congenital myopathy, has written a book which redefine the way most readers think about the severely disabled. It's not a rah-rah look at me I'm amazing situation, nor is it inordinately bleak. Ichikawa's protagonist and narrator is wry, self-aware and very horny- a situation which is exacerbated by her side hustle of writing porn for the internet.
The plot is slight, as one would imagine in a book written from the POV of a person who is basically stuck in her room all day. Basically, the narrator wants to have sex and then there are consequences. I think it's likely to be a memorable read for most readers. The Audiobook was great.
Published 6/4/25
100 Best Books of the 21st Century (New York Times)
Eviction (2016)
by Matthew Desmond
#16
The overriding theme of the non-fiction portion of the 100 Best Books of the 21s Century by the New York Times is "getting to know the underclass." It is poverty, more than race or gender, which interests the voters for this project. Like Nickle and Dimed by Barbara Eisenreich, Eviction is a laser-focused sociology-inspired work of reportage from the front lines of the housing crisis as represented by Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Desmond moved into a particular trailer-park for some of his time researching this book, and the trailer park really takes center stage.
My abiding conclusion after listening to Eviction is the same thing James Baldwin said, "Poverty is expensive." In other words, if you can't exist on a day-to-day basis you end up paying MORE for things like food and shelter. The best example from these pages is the practice of landlords having tenants' possessions removed to a storage unit facility, where they are then charged for keeping their possessions even after they are rendered homeless.
Published 6/9/25
Audiobook Review
The Director (2025)
by Daniel Kehlmann
I think Daniel Kehlmann is my favorite German-language author. I enjoyed both Measuring the World- which is a 1001 Books to Read Before You Die pick, and Tyll, his medieval jester novel. I like his take on historical fiction, dark, but also funny. The problem with historical fiction is that it typically treats the past like we view the present i.e. a perfectible world with characters who possess a positive attitude about the capabilities of humanity to solve its own problems. Of course, no one thought like this until well into the mid/late 20th century, and yet in work after work of historical fiction the protagonists evince an eagerness to investigate and solve problems that, IMO simply didn't exist in the past. People just accepted shit, back in the day.
The Director is about German auteur G.W. Pabst who inauspiciously left Hollywood right before the beginning of World War II to return to the embrace of the Reich, which chose to overlook his past indiscretions (he was own as "Red Pabst" because of his Communist sympathies) and co-opt his talents. After a slow start, The Director really picks up in the second act, when Pabst begins working for the regime. After that point, it's a wild ride.
Published 6/23/25
100 Best Books of the 21st Century (New York Times)
The Emperor of Maladies (2010)
by Siddhartha Mukehjee
#84
I'm wrapping up the non-fiction portion of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century (New York Times) list. I'm not sure if I'm going to do the fiction portion, since most of the books I haven't read from that part of the list are books I already know about and don't want to read. I'm busy enough with my day job these days that I don't feel compelled to read as much during my leisure time. I listened to the Audiobook version over a period of months. It's a 22 hour listen, and frankly, 22 hours of listening to the history of the treatment of cancer proved to be a bit of a slog.
The take-away is that curing cancer is incredibly complicated because cancer itself is incredibly complicated. Really, the history of cancer is the history of medicine itself. No disease has attracted more attention from scientists seeking a cure, and The Emperor of Maladies was written at the cusp of the modern period, where a decline in the cost of genetic sequencing of individuals has made "curing cancer" a realistic prospect for a small but growing cohort of sufferers. The major issue, as it turns out, is that each cancer is genetically different, and a cure requires sequencing the genetics of the cancer cells for a particular person.
Mukehjee does have lots to say about the causes of cancer, which can either be incredibly reassuring or the equivalent of a death sentence with no execution date. Genetics plays a huge role in who does or doesn't get cancer, as do environmental factors and personal choices, but it really isn't only one thing or the other. One fact I did take away is that family history is super important- if cancer runs in your family you are susceptible to it no matter how hard you try to stay away from risk factors, conversely, if no one in your immediate family has had cancer, you are more likely to get away with risky personal choices and environmental exposure.
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