Readings of 2023

Missionary Stew, Ross Thomas : More amusing than its title suggested to me. But of course Thomas always delivers in some measure. 

All About Me!, Mel Brooks: Funny and ingratiating. Brooks has never met a show-biz practitioner he didn't like, he doesn't even bother to take the opportunity to get back at Frank Langella here. (IYKYK.)

The Bloater, Rosemary Tonks: Did not hook me. 

Rent Boy, Gary Indiana: I remember the time...

The Snow Ball, Brigid Brophy: Not quite my jam.

Our Lady of the Flowers, Jean Genet: A real one. This fuckin' guy was amazing.

The Plumed Serpent, D.H. Lawrence: Could not finish it. Lawrence really WAS a writer of extremes. 

The Baron in the Trees, Italo Calvino: Whimsical, a bit strained.

Point Counter Point, Aldous Huxley: Got an edition of this when I was ten, couldn't quite get into it at the time, this attempt it was fine, liked it quite a bit more than After Many A Summer, certainly get why others don't hold it in such high esteem.

White Bicycles, Joe Boyd: Should have gotten through this a long time ago, highly enjoyable. 

The Porkchoppers, Ross Thomas: Old Reliable.

Colonel Sun, Kingsley Amis writing as Robert Markham: Fine.

Gringos, Charles Portis: Not a great great one but certainly not without its pleasures.

Storm Lake, Art Cullen: The very definition of "decent."

Under the Net, Iris Murdoch: This came in handy when I was compelled by some students in my Language of Film class to formulate a detailed refutation of the work of Caveh Zahedi.

The Mordida Man, Ross Thomas: More Old Reliable.

The Strange, Nathan Ballingrud: A good contemporary sci-fi novel. 

Scorpions’ Dance: The President, the Spymaster, and Watergate, Jefferson Morley: Not as thrilling as the title suggests but more than interesting.

Other Men’s Daughters, Richard Stern: Funny, harrowing, beautifully crafted

The Night Has A Thousand Eyes, Cornell Woolrich: Read this while  preparing an audio commentary on the film version, was slightly put off by its labored prose style.

Traffic, Ben Smith: Another book that wanted to be galvanizing and was merely interesting instead.

The Odyssey, translated by Emily Wilson: Fabulous

Martin Chuzzlewit, Charles Dickens: I was kind of put onto this by the Stern. Read it mostly with one eye as I susffered a torn retina in the middle of the year. I do not recommend this condition. For the first time I noticed the devices by which the serial-writer Dickens stretched out his story points. They are amusing. 

Flight to Canada, Ishmael Reed: Fabulous.

The Passenger, Cormac McCarthy: Unsettling. A trip.

Enemies of Promise, Cyril Connelly: Fabulous.

The Dutch House, Ann Patchett: Patchett does not write the kind of fiction to which I'm immediately drawn, but I tried this and found it quite congenial. 

Writers and Missionaries: Essays on the Radical Imagination, Adam Shatz: Wide ranging and fantastic in its insights, of course I ate up the Robbe-Grillet essay. 

Stella Maris, Cormac McCarthy: Unsettling. A trip.

Easily Slip Into Another Reality, Henry Threadgill: Fabulous.

The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown, Lawrence Block: In which the venerable Mr. B. easily steps into a different genre and still delivers a fine entertainment. 

The Fruit Thief, Peter Handke: Little in the way of potentially controversial content. much in the way of detailed landscapes and existential meanderings. 

Jonathan Wild, Henry Fielding: I was put on to this by the Calvino; amusing. 

Going Down, David Markson: A Lowry-ite stages his own Mexican tragedy. Harrowing. 

The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch, Anne Enright: Not quite Aguirre As A Girl, but not always so far off from that.

Hold Fast Your Crown, Yanick Haenel: Not just a ripping tale but a provocative piece of film criticism. Second-favorite contemporary novel of the year for me. 

QED, Richard Feynman: I've had this forever, but seeing Oppenheimer finally nudged me to read it. I almost understood it, and was comforted by Feynman's assurance that the scientists who concocted the theory don't quite understand it themselves. Reading it on visits to the public pool helped me actually understand how light is both particle and wave. 

King Jesus, Robert Graves: A different brand of Old Reliable. 

Dead Man Inside, Vincent Starrett: Interesting and incredibly far-fetched vintage mystery.

Springer’s Progress, David Markson: After reading this I had coffee with a friend who is also a friend of Don De Lillo. I told him, "One of the many things I really admire about De Lillo is that he never wrote a fucking novel about being a literary white heterosexual married guy fucking around in the Village literary scene in the '50, 60s. 70s or whenever."

Tarr, Wyndham Lewis: Effin' mad aincha?

Arabian Nights of 1934, Geoffrey O'Brien: Would be my favorite contemporary novel of the year were in not actually a series of connected prose poems. Outstanding at any rate. 

The Money Harvest, Ross Thomas: Old Reliable. Featuring an implicit plea for the invention of the Squatty Potty. 

The Man Who Died Twice, Richard Osman: Fun.

The Man Without Qualities Vol 1, Robert Musil: Funner.

Lou Reed The King of New York, Will Hermes: The first Lou biography to take Lou's side, more or less. A rewarding approach. 

The Bullet That Missed, Richard Osman: Murder Club continues to be fun 

Strongmen From Mussolini to the Present, Ruth Ben-Ghiat: Useful.

The Last Devil To Die, Richard Osman: Continues to be fun. The Murder Club series is, I discovered, good to share with the wife and father-in-law.

Obelists at Sea, C. Daly King: Another whacked-out vintage myster.

The Letters of Gustave Flaubert, Translated and edited by Francis Steegmuller: Mr. Cranky At Work.

The MANIAC, Benjamin Labatut: DEFINITELY my favorite contemporary novel of the year and maybe the best book I read all year, I dunno man, it's real good.

The Pound Era, Hugh Kenner: Takes Pound's side by just refusing to contend with quite a lot, which spares the reader from potential rhetorical acrobatics. Stiff and protein-packed. Also a relic of a cultural world I don't think we actually inhabit any longer.  

Before the Poison, Peter Robinson: Not bad buy also a reminder that I don't really love murder mysteries that try too hard to be "real" novels. 

The Next Time I Die, Jason Starr: Such a good airplane read, and nothing but, that I left it in the seat pouch as I exited the plane. I hope whoever discovers it appreciates the gift.                                       

Judges of the Secret Court, David Stacton: Superb, terse historical novel on John Wilkes Booth and associates.                                                                                                                                                               

The New York Stories of Henry James, selected with an introduction by Colm Toibin: This James kid has potential, lemme tell ya. 

Comments

[Ron Goldberg]

Suggested as an improvement over this particular Graves - The Nazarene by Sholem Asch.

[George]

I finally read Pat Frank's "Alas, Babylon" (1959). Holds up after 64 years. An obvious influence on Stephen King's "The Stand" and pretty much every zombie apocalypse movie.

I also finally read Richard Condon's "The Manchurian Candidate" (also from '59). Was surprised by how much satirical humor the novel has. I enjoyed the brainwasher who points to "Seduction of the Innocent" for showing how comic books brainwashed a generation of children to become criminals.

[Edward Champion]

Zahedi is still around? I remember getting a wildly vitriolic and somewhat deranged email from someone "in his circle" after I expressed an innocuous and decidedly non-effusive opinion about WHOLPHIN. Perhaps his "circle" has been firing off missives to your students? I would have said nothing, but I've read all of Murdoch (some of her novels three times) and she remains one of my all time faves. Iris, all of dear Iris (save for the tragic short novels at the end), should be served up as a riposte for all such joyless post-mumblecore mediocrity! Perhaps THE SEA, THE SEA in response to TRIANGLE OF SADNESS? By the way, I read SOME CAME RUNNING last month. Did you ever finish it, Glenn? Not the best James Jones novel (it runs out of gas in the last 300 pages, but dammit if it ain't interesting). The elided apostrophes and unusual syntax for close omniscient are remarkably original and certainly did not deserve the heated opprobrium. (A shame that he was scared off from using it again -- since it also features a bit in FROM HERE TO ETERNITY.) Jones, in general, is terrific. Far more than a "war novelist."

[GK]

Mr. Z. is still around, and very active, at the New School and elsewhere. He did not send me an email, but he took some exception to my review of the film version of "The Show About The Show" and lampooned me in a subsequent episode of the streaming version of "The Show About The Show," taking a picture of me wearing a "Dogpound" baseball cap and wiping that logo from it and replacing it with the word "Stupid," which was cute and reminded me of a Video Toaster effect, which filled me with nostalgia for my Viare Publishing days. This was all back in 2017, and I wasn't aware of this until the early winter 0f 2023 because one of my students pointed it out to me. It inspired me to work Zahedi's project into a recitation on a certain strain of documentary in which I included Varda's "Lions Love" and Godard's "Letter To Jane;" sadly for Zahedi, I used his work as an example of the solipsistic/decadent phase of the strain. Zahedi's defense in his show is that of "honesty," but of course in the writing and editing of his work there's a necessary aspect of contrivance even beyond the way that he's self-serving in his self-defense. Which is where Murdoch's "Under the Net" comes in; there's a dialogue in there in which the narrator and the character Hugo, in which Hugo insists that with respect to truth, as soon as language enters the picture, it's impossible to communicate, no matter how "honest" you are or think you are being. In any event, I am not in fact as down-the-line hostile to Zahedi or his project as he seems to believe I am, and I think we're still neighbors, so I like to keep things on the down-low cordial side.

I've not finished the Jones although I really ought to.

[Edward Champion]

Thanks for the remarkably comprehensive deep dive, Glenn. I'm largely in the dark about such free-wheeling New School and elsewhere gossip, although that does seem like a remarkably elaborate creative method of settling a far from gargantuan score. Video Toaster takes me back to a high school neighbor with an Amiga and at least several bountiful hours playing around with something that is now remarkably primitive. You've somehow succeeded in awakening some minor curiosity in the more recent Zahedi oeuvre (particularly with the UNDER THE NET reference; I am familiar with that passage) and, for that, he really should pay rightful homage to you for this comment. Perhaps John Wilson could serve as the liaison between you two? Seems less bellicose than Edwards and Sellers at any rate!

[Martin Schneider]

I predict that Lee Child will not succeed in holding any candle in the general vicinity of Ross Thomas.