Best New Reads
- Both Flesh and Not: Essays by David Foster Wallace (2012)
Synopsis: 15 previously uncollected essays about tennis, prose poetry, language, and Borges.
I don’t even know where to start. Perhaps it’s enough to say that I have no interest in tennis and yet I read both essays on the sport with the same level of pleasure as all the rest. Wallace’s passion for everything he chooses to write about is clear, but most important is his passion for the writing itself, for the language and the pulling together of ideas—his use of parentheticals, semicolons, dashes, and footnotes makes the reader feel the exhilaration of his mind at work. Truly a joy to read. - Bullets Into Bells: Poets & Citizens Respond to Gun Violence ed. Brian Clements, Alexandra Teague, & Dean Rader (2018)
Synopsis: Poems about gun violence paired with statements from survivors, activists, and public officials.
The pairing thing is an interesting concept that doesn’t really work out in practice, as most of the statements barely mention the poem at all, merely using it as a stump on which to deliver some well-rehearsed speech. While most of them felt earnest, it didn’t feel like there was any particular reason for them to be in this particular volume. But there are some really good poems in here, and Colum McCann’s introduction is pretty good. - Nothing Good Can Come from This by Kristi Coulter (2018)
Synopsis: A collection of essays on life before, during, and after the numbing haze of alcohol, from the perspective of a middle-aged woman.
Let’s be honest: I’m not the target audience for this book, and I probably wouldn’t have sought it out. But the title caught my eye while I was scanning the free books in the break room and by the time I figured out that I was probably 20 years and a drinking problem short of being who this book was written for I was hooked. Coulter’s writing is sharp-witted, refreshingly frank, and deeply vulnerable without being cloying or performative. Comparisons to David Sedaris are hard to avoid in this genre, and Coulter has her own style and perspective which serves her well in that comparison; the biggest point of similarity (and not in a bad way) is both writers’ willingness to not look away. Like Sedaris in “Twelve Moments in the Life of the Artist” or “The Smoking Section,” Coulter doesn’t just shove her vice under a rug and expound upon the wondrous virtues of her new life—it’s an honest accounting of her experiences with and without alcohol, and the highs and lows of both. - Radio Free Vermont by Bill McKibben (2017)
Synopsis: Radio host Vern Barclay, on the run from the law after an anti-Walmart prank gets blown out of proportion, starts a movement for Vermont to secede from the United States.
McKibben’s portrait of Vermont and its people is irresistibly charming, and the book is certainly an entertaining romp. That being said, I can’t help but feel that his characters’ politics are also (charmingly) inadequate to the moment. - Spring and All by William Carlos Williams (1923)
Synopsis: Part poetry collection, part poetry manifesto.
The first time I read this I got none of it. The poetry aside (I liked some of the poems, didn’t like others) I had such a hard time locking on to any sort of sense that I kept falling asleep. Then I went back through, underlining and making notes and making sure I didn’t move on to the next paragraph until I’d understood the one I just read—and it turns out it’s a really interesting book, a manifesto on the role of imagination and Williams’s distaste for art that is a “beautiful illusion.” Though there are a lot of interesting ideas to wrestle with, especially with regard to writing (and some sections that, frankly, still make no sense to me), the part that really stuck with me is his argument for the necessity of good art. Good art, he says, is not “a ‘lie’, a stupefaction, a kind of mesmerism, a thing to block out ‘life’, bitter to the individual, by a ‘ vision of beauty ‘. It is a work of the imagination.” Good art “show[s] the individual, depressed before it, that his life is valuable — when completed by the imagination. And then only.” In other words, good art is not escapism from life, it is the missing piece to life. - Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl by Diane Seuss (2018)
Synopsis: A fierce and fantastic collection of poems inspired by the world of art.
Diane Seuss’s fourth collection could easily find a place on an exhibit wall right alongside the paintings that inspired many of her poems, as it deserves just as much time for contemplation and appreciation. These poems are dense the way a child’s summer’s day is dense—bittersweet and infinite, full of discovery and loss. As in her previous collection, Seuss brings to bear her whole wealth of experience, from childhood to the present, as well as a mind eminently suited to finding the weird and the wonderful in art and art history. Her influences are here to: Dickinson’s truth told slant; Ginsberg’s howling, at once communal and lonely; Whitman’s joyous invitation; and Williams’s reality completed, not hidden, by imagination. I’d say she deserves to sit at the table with this pantheon of American poets, but one gets the sense that she’s already claimed her seat, and says hi for them. - The Story About the Story: Great Writers Explore Great Literature ed. J.C. Hallman (2009)
Synopsis: A collection of essays in which writers (some great, some not) bring their own personal passion to the criticism of various authors and works (some great, some not).
Leave your baggage at the door: I came into this mostly disliking Catcher in the Rye (and assuming, therefore, that I disliked all Salinger) but Charles D’Ambrosio’s “Salinger and Sobs” is a moving and well-crafted essay, and has convinced to me to take another look at Salinger’s work. Likely there’s an essay in here that will do the same for you (though I will say that editor J. C. Hallman’s own essay did nothing to change my undying hatred for Henry James). Other highlights include Salman Rushdie’s essay on The Wizard of Oz (mostly about the movie, oddly enough), James Wood’s essay on Chekhov, and Robert Hass’s enthralling close reading of Robert Lowell’s “The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket.”
Two inexplicable choices for inclusion that I would be remiss not to tell you to skip are D. H. Lawrence’s essay on Moby Dick and Frank O’Connor’s essay on Katherine Mansfield. Lawrence’s essay, though engaging at first for his prose style if not the cogency of his ideas, completely blindsided me at the end with his assertion that Moby Dick is about how the white race has been tricked into destroying itself and in its destruction will take all other races down with it. Not sure how that racist claptrap got in here.
O’Connor’s essay, meanwhile, positively drips with sexism and a dash of homophobia. Quote: “Though I know nothing that would suggest she had any homosexual experiences, the assertiveness, malice, and even destructiveness in her life and work make me wonder whether she hadn’t.” End ridiculous quo— OH WAIT THERE’S MORE: “It would be too much to exaggerate the significance of her occasionally sordid love affairs…but the idea of ‘experience’ by which she justified them is a typical expedient of the woman with a homosexual streak who envies men and attributes their imaginary superiority to the greater freedom with which they are supposed to be able to satisfy their sexual appetite.” And then he takes a crap on “A Room of One’s Own” and slut-shames Jane Austen and Emily Dickinson (you think I’m joking but I very much am not). Additionally, O’Connor repeatedly goes out of his way to state just how well-written the stories are, but somehow they’re just not good enough, certainly not as good as Joyce or Proust or pretty much any male writer in existence. Utter garbage, don’t know why it’s in here.
But seriously, this book is worth reading for D’Ambrosio’ and Hass’s essays alone, so I’ll tentatively ignore a couple incredibly, putridly rotten apples.
Best Re-Reads
- 2666 by Roberto Bolaño, trans. Natasha Wimmer (2008, orig. 2004)
Synopsis: Four scholars search for a reclusive author; a math professor starts hearing voices; a journalist goes to cover a boxing match and gets more than he bargained for; in the city of Santa Teresa women are being killed and someone is urinating in churches; a young German boy grows up to be a reclusive author.
Though not exactly a sequel to The Savage Detectives, it’s impossible not to compare the two when reading them back to back. Not only do they share some similar themes and plot points (and that ominous number), but structurally they are almost mirrors of each other: The Savage Detectives begins and ends in Mexico while the middle section takes place largely in Europe; 2666, on the other hand, centers around the fictional Mexican city of Santa Teresa but is framed by two Europe-based sections. In the earlier novel our heroes are driven from Mexico, for both practical and existential reasons, while in the later work each protagonist is drawn inexorably to the Sonora desert. Strangely enough, it’s The Savage Detectives that feels like a fundamentally Mexican novel, while 2666 seems to take on a more global perspective, it’s view of Mexico more voyeuristic than experiential. Certainly Bolaño is striving for the universality of a Great Novel™—and he often succeeds, though naturally as with any ambitious project there are valleys comparable to the peaks (Oscar Fate being the most obvious—he somehow manages to be both uninteresting and unconvincing). Uncomfortably dark, complex, confounding, profound and occasionally profoundly funny, this is a novel you’ll want to read again to truly get the most out of it—just probably not right away. (Also, make sure to read the “Notes on the First Edition” included in the back of the book to get some valuable insight.) - Arcadia by Tom Stoppard (1993)
Synopsis: On an early-19th-century British country estate, a young girl makes a mathematical breakthrough while her mother fights against the advances of Romanticism and her tutor advances his own romanticism while trying to avoid fights. Meanwhile, in the late 20th century, two researchers converge on that same estate, each investigating their own symbols of the triumphs and failures of the Romantic ideals. Also there’s chaos theory and witty repartee. Oh, and it’s a play.
This is one of those works that I have a hard time talking about in detail because there’s so much going on and I get REALLY EXCITED ‘cause it’s SO GOOD and I don’t know where to start. It’s about chaos theory and determinism and history repeating itself and art and life and it’s HILARIOUS and SAD and I love it. Or, as I put it in the paper I wrote for my first college English class: “Arcadia is about complementary elements that seem oppositional: the mathematical and the poetic, the scientific and the literary, the classical and the romantic, the old and the new.” I also brought up a point about Ada Lovelace that, now that I think about it, really should have been in the play, so take that *checks Wikipedia* Sir Tom Stoppard. - Brave New Worlds ed. John Joseph Adams (2011)
Synopsis: A huge collection of dystopian fiction: from legalized murder to illegal environmentalism; from a utilitarian paradise that maximizes everyone’s happiness at the cost of one child’s misery to a 24/6 carnival city that pays for its pleasure with one day of unending pain; from lunar miners who follow a charismatic leader to rebellion to…lunar miners who follow a—look there are only so many ideas, right?
No matter when you read this you’re bound to find at least one story that is disturbingly relevant to some recent shift in the culture or new oppressive policy. It’s by no means a definitive collection of dystopian fiction, but it covers a lot of ground (with the occasional redundancy). Some of the stories can be, perhaps, a little heavy-handed (*coughBradburycough*) but the collection over-all is of above-average quality for an anthology of this scope. - Dune (Books 1-6) by Frank Herbert (1965-1985)
Synopsis: Spanning over 3000 years, Herbert’s masterpiece explores the consequences of a civilization dependent on a single, rare substance—and on a single prophetic vision of the future.
Though this is my third time reading the series, it’s my first time actually understanding it. As such, it’s gratifying to discover that Herbert is actually as smart as I always assumed he was. I don’t want to go too much into why I love this series so much because I’m thinking about writing a longer piece on it at some point in the future, but the thing that most stuck out to me as I was reading it this time is that, though the scope of the series is truly epic, Herbert is endlessly fascinated with nuance, subtlety, and minutiae. That combination is, to me, one of the main reasons why these books are so readable.
Also, some quick advice: Don’t read the Brian Herbert/Kevin J. Anderson books.
Also, Children of Dune (Book 3) is a hot mess but it’s worth slogging through it, especially to fully understand what Herbert is doing with prognostication and “The Golden Path.” That being said, if you want to skip it and go straight to God Emperor of Dune I wouldn’t blame you.
Also, if anyone who hasn’t read any of the series wants to do a podcast where we read and talk about each book chapter by chapter let me know, I feel like it could be fun.
Also, and this is a free idea for anyone who can make it happen, the correct way to adapt Dune for the screen would be an anime. You’re welcome. - Flying to America: 45 More Stories by Donald Barthelme (2007)
Synopsis: 45 previously uncollected short stories about delusional directors, lackluster lovers, besieged bureaucrats, and forgotten fleets.
As with fellow absurdist Richard Brautigan, there’s an inherent melancholy about Barthelme, even at his funniest, that keeps him from being smarmy or merely clever. He is never over-dramatic (though his characters often are), and always exceptionally human. - The Great Frustration by Seth Fried (2011)
Synopsis: Short stories about an annual picnic/disaster, the surreality of life in the Garden of Eden, and newly-discovered microscopic creatures that shed light on the human condition.
As the title suggests, Fried writes about people (and the occasional monkey) pressed up against the boundary of their existence, never quite breaking through. Fried often takes as his subject the first-person plural, inviting us into a “we” we didn’t know we belonged to; his mission here is empathy, and these stories offer a masterclass in it. The final piece, “Animalcula,” is a series of 15 ostensible textbook entries on microscopic creatures, from the eldrit, which drastically alters all of its characteristics as soon as they’re documented, to the halifite, which shows a different emotion depending on the level of magnification with which it is observed. I could read a whole book of these—the way Fried distills elements of humanity into these creatures is elegant and often profound, and the context of the satirical textbook, rather than being distracting, only adds to the effect, as these poetic observations are delivered in the intellectual tones of scientific truth. - How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu (2010)
Synopsis: Charles Yu (no relation) is a time machine repairman who finds himself in a bit of a pickle when he shoots a time machine repairman named Charles Yu (relation) and gets stuck in a loop. With his non-existent dog and anxious AI, Charles has to figure out how to get out of the loop, a plan which somehow seems to center on a book called How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu (your guess is as good as mine here). Behind (Beneath? Above? Narrative-space-time is weird) all this is the story of Charles, his long-suffering mother, and his father with whom he spent years working to invent the first time machine.
Pathos is often the all-too-sweet icing on the science fiction cake, an overt emotional layer that would function exactly the same way in a contemporary, “realistic” setting. In Yu’s daring take on the genre, pathos becomes the rich, complex center of the sci-fi cake (I’m not a baker and I have very simple taste in dessert so I’m just gonna finish with this analogy and move on before it gets any worse). What I mean is that you actually need to follow the science-fictional happenings in order to fully grasp the emotional heart of the story—the first time I read it, I knew it was great, but I don’t think I actually completely understood the ending, and I found it a much more deeply impactful experience this time around. It’s a risky move, but for the reader who’s willing to play along it pays off big. That being said, I did notice this time through that Yu’s prose can be a little overcooked at times, treading and retreading the same image or emotion one or two too many times in a way that is less artful (if, perhaps, more authentic to the in-world premise of the book’s authorship) than I’d like it to be. It’s not so much that the finely honed sentence, the sharply observed truth, the heartbreaking moment of vulnerability, etc. isn’t there, and more that its effect is sometimes lessened by the surrounding text. I also maybe found the protagonist a little…too relatable at this particular point in my life, but that’s obviously my own baggage.
I should also probably mention there is humor in here, but think less The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and more Mostly Harmless. It’s dark, and by its very nature even more self-aware of the bleakness of its characters’ lives than Adams’s work, so it’s not gonna make you laugh out loud. But the humor is there. - The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño, trans. Natasha Wimmer (2007, orig. 1998)
Synopsis: In November of 1975, 17-year-old poet Juan García Madero joins the visceral realists, a loose collective of avant-garde artists led by Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima. By New Years Eve he’s become embroiled in events beyond his control as he, Belano, Lima, and a girl named Lupe drive out of Mexico City, both to flee an angry pimp and to seek out a poet who may or may not even be alive. That journey will affect the next 20 years of their lives.
This immersive story reads more like a fascinating (albeit oblique) oral history than a novel, with each of the many narrators having their own distinct voice (also, hat-tip to the translator here, who truly does an excellent job preserving what, to me, is one of the most important aspects of the work). That it’s partially based on real people and events lends to this sense of realism without being gimmicky or distracting. If you’ve heard of Bolaño you’ve probably heard that there’s a lot of symbology and hidden secrets and references and whatnot going on, and while you can get lost in that if you want to (I spent an inordinate amount of time analyzing the middle section to figure out who the person conducting the interviews might be; I still don’t know for sure) you don’t need to in order to enjoy the novel. - An Unfortunate Woman by Richard Brautigan (1994)
Synopsis: A semi-autobiographical diary / ersatz novel (a “free fall calendar map,” as Brautigan calls it) of a year(ish) in the narrator’s life, in which he holds a chicken in Hawaii, watches an American movie in a Chinese theater in Toronto, breaks his leg in San Francisco (possibly while fighting a dragon), and gets put on trial for crimes against Time.
Page for page, there’s more benign absurdity and humor here than anything else. Yet it’s also true that the novel is framed by the death of Brautigan’s close friend, is obliquely centered around another woman’s suicide (the unfortunate woman of the title), and was the last book Brautigan wrote before taking his own life. It makes for a strange reading experience—there’s a darkness dwelling just below the surface the entire time, but it never really rises to the top, like the storms that threaten but never materialize as Brautigan languishes on his Montana porch in the final days of his journey. Given all that, An Unfortunate Woman is a beautiful, complex mix of everything that makes Brautigan such an engaging writer. The ending kind of breaks my heart every time I read it, but it’s ultimately hopeful and quietly inspiring in a way novels rarely are, which I think is what keeps bringing me back. - Wait ‘Til You Have Real Problems by Scott Beal (2014)
Synopsis: Poems about masculinity, fatherhood, and mental health.
I was trying to pinpoint what exactly made this collection so effective when I stumbled across a journal entry from when I’d read it the first time in which I referred to it as “a terrified, courageous set of poems.” I’d read the final poem, “Things to Think About,” four or five times before Wait ‘Til You Have Real Problems was even published and it had never failed to give me shivers (still doesn’t), but in this context there’s a desperation to it that I hadn’t seen before. It’s this vulnerability, this willingness to give voice to fears that are not resolved by the final line that, I think, is the throughline of these poems.
Certain of Eventual Failure 