With eight inches of snow on the ground and no sign of rescue by plow just yet, I'm in a wonderful position for forced introspection (as well as listening to the Steve Forbert tune referenced above), and the specific topic of this self-examination has to some degree been my failure to get anything written lately. Since Christmas break, I've gotten plenty of schoolwork done, read several books, and come up with at least one idea (and a couple of pages) for a short story, but I haven't done anything significant on the writing front in roughly a month, which is not normal for me.
Part of the reason, I've decided, is sheer fatigue. For reasons that passeth all understanding, our dorm duty schedule was altered at the start of this year. In the old days, we'd be on duty once every six days during the fall, while our admissions officers were traveling, and once they came off the road and joined the duty team, we'd be on once every eight days. This year, however, duties and rosters and assignments were rejiggered, leaving everyone on a six-day rotation--except for one trimester of the year, when each master would go on a FIVE-day rotation. In other words, I've been pulling my eight-AM-to-midnight duties at a furious clip since the New Year. That tends to disrupt one's flow.
Mind you, I've been typing. My hands were actually a little sore yesterday because of all the keyboard work I've been doing. But I've mostly been typing stuff like Facebook status posts or quiz answers on Sporcle.com. Okay, yes, I did put together a seven-point manifesto for our school newspaper to follow in the future, but that was only about a page and a half. No, I've been doing lots and lots of short walks in and out of my brain, but I haven't tried to strap on my boots and head out to Writerland in some time.
And yes, I'm well aware of the rhythms that I tend to fall into as a writer. Basically, they're systolic and diastolic, just like the heart--there's an input phase and an output phase. Periodically I have to stop pumping stuff out and let myself fill back up. I've been doing that, at least, having finished the year's eighth book (Terry Pratchett's Unseen Academicals) during yesterday's snowstorm. And the stuff that's coming in already proving helpful; in fact, it was my reading of The Best American Science Writing 2009 a couple of weeks back that gave me the idea for the short story I'm working on.
And of course, a lot of this is predicated on the never-easy waiting to hear from agents and editors. I've got two manuscripts out there, and if I get a nibble on one of them, I promise you'll see instantaneous productivity in getting editorial changes and polishes done.
All in all, however, it's undeniable that the hard part of writing isn't the fingers-on-keys part. No, as many have observed, Michael Chabon among them, writing is about making decisions, and making decisions requires thinking, and thinking can be hard work. Daydreaming up wild ideas? No problemo! I can (and do) take care of that business all the time, even when I'm in the shower or hauling the garbage cans down to the street. But deciding which ideas to keep and which to discard? That requires concentration. You have to select words that might get the idea down in a satisfactory way, then move them around, then pull them out and replace them with other words, then put some of the old words back in, but in a different order, then decide if they'll fit with the words you wrote earlier... It's a lot like building a house, except that you don't have any blueprints, and there's no budget, and you don't know how many people will be on the construction crew, and you're not entirely sure where the lot is.
Heck, it was hard enough getting this post put together this morning, and this is a pretty paltry little lean-to of words, isn't it?
Anyway, you don't need to send get-well cards or worry that I've shut up for good, a la J.D. Salinger (who shut up long before he went to his grave earlier this week). No, the systole will be back. Lub-dub. Lub-dub. Lub-dub. It's just that it's hard to think about the dub in the middle of the lub.
Then again, maybe I should have thought harder about that last sentence.
I haven't yet figured out why, but it's been apparent to me for a while now that my rhetorical style tends to be that of the guy throwing out answers, as opposed to the guy tossing out questions. When I do use a question, it's almost always a rhetorical question, intended to lead the reader toward a conclusion that I'm preparing to share, as opposed to an actual request for information.
So what does this mean?
No, really. That's not rhetorical. I don't have the slightest idea what this means. Oh, sure, I've got theories, but I don't have an answer. Maybe you do. Or maybe one of my theories is actually true.
For one thing, I'm a teacher. Though teachers certainly spend a great deal of their time posing questions, those questions are almost always ones to which the answers are already known (though not necessarily by the student trying to answer). In fact, i spend a great deal of my time and energy trying to figure out exactly which questions to ask, and how to phrase them, and to whom I should pose them. I don't want to ask a question that offers the student no challenge, or that makes the student look stupid--unless of course he really deserves it--so in some ways I have to ask myself the burning question "Is this a good question?" But in the classroom, that's typically the only question I ask where I don't already know the answer. (Well, other than "Why don't you have your homework?") Given my daily routine, then, perhaps I tend to speak in declarative sentences when I post because I'm just so sick of posing questions.
Before I was a teacher, however, I was a student, and the student's job is to provide answers. I provided them for 12 years of public school, then four of college, then two and a half of grad school. That's a lot of answers. Some were very short ("Six!" "The Louisiana Purchase!" "Wayne Gretzky!") and others went on for loooooong stretches of text, particularly when I was explaining why Henry James needed to be pummeled about the head and shoulders for foisting "The Beast in the Jungle" on an unsuspecting public. But whatever the case, they were answers, and I suppose I might still be providing them in this forum because that's the main thing I learned to provide in school.
But one thing I learned in school were the concepts of genetics and upbringing, and there's no doubt that my tendency toward telling people things comes from both nature and nurture. My father is a Marine officer, which means his raison d'etre is telling subordinates the way the universe runs; officers do not, as a rule, ask those serving under them which orders should be given. Dad was also a scholar of some note in his younger days before he spent a year teaching and then took up the job of answering the question of whether people could or could not come to the University of North Carolina. My mother was salutatorian of her high school class and spent her career telling various patients what their doctors actually meant to say. And both of them, of course, spent many long years explaining to David and me such things as what time we would be home that night, or how the lawn would be mowed. And it's not as though I haven't gotten practice in this sort of thing with my own kids.
Or could it be cultural? There's a recent linguistic phenomenon called Upspeak, which has been documented primarily in the U.S. and Australia. In Upspeak (or HRT, for High Rising Terminal), even a declarative sentence tends to come upward in pitch at the end, making it sound like a question. Some linguists believe it suggests insecurity; others think it's intended to prevent interruption, because it sounds as though the speaker isn't finished. It's commonly thought to occur primarily in women, especially young women, especially in California, among the stereotypical "Valley Girl" population. So maybe I'm, like, refusing to ask questions because I don't want to sound, y'know, like I'm a 14-year-old girl?
Then again, maybe I'm just generally a know-it-all. You think?
As all good readers of the works of Douglas Adams know, there is a way for a person to learn to fly. The trick is to throw oneself at the ground and miss.
At one point in Life, the Universe, and Everything, Arthur Dent accomplishes this feat by not thinking about the fact that he is plummeting to his death and instead distracting himself with the thought of tulips.
So today, with the press of writing up term grades upon me, the irritation of dorm duties coming every five days, and the prospect of the Democrats screwing up yet another chance to Get Something Done in Washington, I have decided that it is a good time not to think about any of that.
I'm damn sure not going to fly if I do think about any of it.
*I'm fired up to get some winter birding in. Right now I'm targeting
the end of this month, with a possible trip to Blackwater NWR on the
Eastern Shore of Maryland. If that doesn't pan out, it may be time for
a return trip to either Land's End or the George Washington Birthplace
on the Virginia side. I want snow geese, dammit, and I want them in
quantity.
*The national shutdown of B. Dalton Bookseller (a division of Borders,
as it happens) meant that the store in Charlottesville's mall put its
entire stock on heavy-duty markdown. I didn't spend an enormous amount,
but I did pick up John Scalzi's Zoe's Tale, a Sandra Boynton calendar, and a copy of The Best American Science Writing 2009.
I'm working through the latter just now, having read an awful lot of
Scalzi over the holidays, and so far the articles therein seems focused
almost entirely on neurology. Interesting, but I'm waiting for it to
branch into some other areas. Since David Quammen's "Contagious Cancer"
is one of the upcoming entries, I'm betting that branching will occur
soon.
*Of all the stupid things being thrown around in the discussion of Harry Reid's comments about Barack Obama's appeal to the electorate--and there are a number--the dumbest, to my mind, has got to be the attempt to compare Reid to former Minority Leader Trent Lott. Reid, if you haven't been following the news, was revealed in the new book Game Change to have said in private conversation back in 2008 that he felt Obama could be elected because he was "light skinned" and spoke "with no Negro dialect--unless he wanted to have one." The criticism of Reid has focused largely on his use of the word "Negro," rather than his apparent belief that a man with darker skin couldn't win--a far more damning commentary on white America than anything he said about black America. Still, he apologized for his remarks, and President Obama has accepted his apology.
The word "Negro" having fallen out of favor, however, Reid's use of it has attracted a lot of commentary, especially from Republicans, including RNC Chairman Michael Steele and Senators Jon Kyl and John Cornyn, the latter of whom feels Reid should resign as Lott did. Many of them have suggested that Lott was judged more harshly than Reid by the media and the public. And they're right, of course--Lott was excoriated for the remarks he made in 2002, resigning as minority leader in their wake. Why the difference in treatment?
Maybe because what Lott said was so much worse than what Reid said. Let's not forget, Lott (whose record on racial issues was already a little shaky, what with his opposing the extension of the Voting Rights Act and speaking at a meeting of the segregationist Council of Conservative Citizens) stepped up at a public celebration of Sen. Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday and said, "When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud
of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we
wouldn't have had all these problems over the years, either."
If you weren't paying attention when Thurmond ran for president, it was in 1948, as the nominee for the Dixiecrat Party, whose slogan, "Segregation Forever!" contained a not-terribly-subtle segregationist message. In other words, while Reid was using a word that might be considered dismissive or offensive (though the United Negro College Fund apparently doesn't find it so), Lott was musing on how proud he was that his home state had supported a defiantly segregationist party, and how much better off America would be if only the rest of the country had done so, too.
As Atlantic blogger Ta-Nehisi Coates put it, Lott wasn't forced out "because he said something 'racially insensitive.' He was forced to resign because he offered
tacit endorsement of white supremacy--frequently.
"Claiming that Harry Reid's comments are the same, is
like claiming that referring to Jews as 'Hebrews' is the same as
endorsing Nazism."
*I've been pretty good about my lunchtime diet lately, restricting myself to soup and salad. Today I slipped a bit--I ate the fried fish sandwich, as well as the split pea soup, but I did get it without the bun.
*Do we still have snow on the ground from December 18th's big storm? Oh, mais oui! And I'm not just talking about the big mounds created by snowplows, either; a significant section of our yard is still white.
*Kelly and I displayed an uncommon discipline by going to Ikea last week and spending less than $100 there. (Well, actually, she picked up a half-dozen cinnamon rolls for the boys, which boosted the total to about $105, but we were going to come in under the century mark before that.) On Sunday I put together the big black Benno bookshelf we bought, and last night we put it into place in the living room. Of course, to do that, we had to move the sofa back into its regular position, and to do that we had to take down the Christmas tree, and to do that... anway, we eventually got the shelf where it's supposed to be, and it's gradually filling up with scrapbooks and DVDs and family photographs. Maybe we'll find someplace to put books next.
*The species list for 2010 so far contains 35 species, largely thanks to an early-January trip around the Orange/Madison border with Leighton Reid. We didn't see the Rapidan eagles, alas, but we logged a number of beautiful hawks, some wild turkeys, multiple species of woodpeckers, and one mysterious grey bird that we'd both claim was probably a Townsend's Solitaire if only we thought anyone would believe us.
*I've officially put in my request for a trimester-length sabbatical next year. Keep your fingers crossed for me...
PART IV OF IV: DRAMA, POETRY,
SHORT FICTION, OTHER
A lot of what I've read over the last decade doesn't fit neatly into the Comics, Novel, or Nonfiction categories above, but that doesn't mean it wasn't great. Those various works can therefore be found here.
On Bullshit/
Harry G. Frankfurt
A very thin book containing a single brilliant essay, one
which posits a distinction between the garden-variety liar (whose underlying
respect for the truth is evidenced by the care with which he avoids it) and the
bullshitter, who doesn't really care what the truth is, so long as he gets his
way. Well worth your time to find and read.
The Art of
Fiction/ John Gardner
One of the most effective how-to books I've ever come
across, and where writing is concerned, I've come across a few. If you're
struggling with a narrative, let Gardner (author of the brilliant Grendel) give you some pointers; you
won't regret it.
Beowulf/
Seamus Heaney, translator
Speaking of Grendel, you'll never see his original
appearance rendered any better than this: a masterful modern translation of the
Anglo-Saxon epic by the Nobel-winning poet, who also gets points for giving
props to A-S scholar supreme J.R.R. Tolkien in his intro.
20th
Century Ghosts/ Joe Hill
A collection of wonderful short stories from many genres and
none, but included here primarily for the stunning "Pop Art," the single best
short story I've read in this millennium.It shouldn't work, but it does. Brilliant.
Godel, Escher,
Bach/ Douglas R. Hofstadter
Unique, in the literal sense. You will never read anything
remotely like this mashup of history, mathematics, logic puzzles, Socratic
dialogue, and Carrollesque wordplay. A dazzling intellectual achievement that's
worth trying several times until you get it right.
All in the Timing:
Fourteen Plays/ David Ives
There's nothing so ordinary or so bizarre that Ives can't
figure out a way to turn it into a thoughtful and hilarious short play: the
difficulties of small talk ("Sure Thing"), the importance of attitude ("The
Philadelphia"), or the neverending efforts of simians to write Shakespeare
("Words, Words, Words").
Making Love to
Roget's Wife/ Ron Koertge
With a title like that, you know you're in good hands, and
Koertge's unorthodox poetic style and unerring ability to find strange new
subjects for his poems make him well worth your trust.
Changing Planes/
Ursula K. Le Guin
Seemingly Le Guin's most effortless book in years, this
whimsical anthropological guide gathers a dozen or so related sketches of the
inhabitants of the various planes of existence one can reach if only one is
bored enough.
K2/ Patrick
Meyers
Even if you can't see its legendary two-story pseudo-ice
wall stage set, Meyers' two-man mountaineering play is a thrilling, moving, and
unforgettable examination of human behavior at the extremes.
Black Swan Green/
David Mitchell
Arguably a novel, this brilliant book is also a cycle of
related short stories about an adolescent boy growing up in small-town England
during the early 80s. And speaking as someone who was in England during the
early 80s (and an adolescent boy to boot), trust me when I say Mitchell
absolutely nails the physical, emotional, and cultural details.
Satan Says/
Sharon Olds
Another poet you should really check out if you haven't.
Olds' gift for metaphor and startling images will set you back on your heels if
you're not careful--and I really don't think you should be careful.
Your Hate Mail Will
Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever/ John Scalzi
Yes, his science fiction (Old Man's War, The Ghost Brigades,
The Last Colony) is great, but Hugo winner Scalzi is at his best saying what he
thinks, and his blog (http://whatever.scalzi.com/)
is where he does it best. You'll see plenty of gems worth quoting, but his
account of visiting the Creation Museum remains the best thing he's ever
written.
The Complete
Peanuts/ Charles M. Schulz
Lovingly published by Fantagraphics Books in hardback
editions, these are the first stirrings of the comic strip that would remake
the comic strip into a vehicle for something beyond gags and whimsy. Look back
and remember.
Me Talk Pretty One
Day/ David Sedaris
It's hard to know how much of this stuff Sedaris makes up,
but ultimately it doesn't matter. Whether he's a gifted fiction writer or just
a really funny memoirist, you'll still find his pidgin French hilarious,
especially when he and his fellow students attempt to discuss zombies and
Easter traditions.
The Nerd/
Larry Shue
Playwright Shue died young, in a plane crash at Chapel
Hill's Horace Williams Airport, of all things), but he left us with a handful
of plays, including this absolute gem of a farce, in which a well-meaning
architect feels bound to open his house to the man who once saved his life--and
who's a complete social disaster. Uproariously funny and tight as a drum.
That's it, folks--I spent ten years reading so I could
share all the good stuff with you. Find one of the books above and get cracking! --PC
My love for good NF books is only partly driven by my own
status as a nonfiction writer. The fact is that I've spent the last ten years
delighted by not only the true stories these writers have chosen to tell, but
the way in which they've told them--often even when the subjects they've chosen
hold, um, limited appeal for me. THAT, folks, is the sign of a great book.
To Hate Like This
Is to Be Happy Forever/ Will Blythe
So maybe I'm a bit of a homer here, but my fellow Chapel
Hillian has examined the Duke/Carolina basketball rivalry with a keen eye, a
sharp wit, and an enormous appreciation of the background and the passion that
we share. Simply outstanding.
As Nature Made Him:
The Boy Who Was Raised As a Girl/ John Colapinto
The astonishing and tragic story of the baby boy who lost
his penis in a horrific accident and whose parents were persuaded to raise him
as a girl--and whose doctors hid the truth about the experiment. A stunning
examination of gender, identity, and truth.
Salvation on Sand
Mountain/ Dennis Covington
A classic of the "literature of obsession," in which
journalist Covington goes to Appalachia to report on snake-handling and soon finds
himself so caught up in the spirit of the tiny backwoods churches that he joins
in the reptilian ceremony. Beautifully told.
The Origin of
Species/ Charles Darwin
Yes, it's an acknowledged classic and one of the most
important books in human history, but it's also surprisingly readable. Darwin's
genius was not just his insight into natural selection, but his ability to
examine that insight in a clear and comprehensible way. If you haven't tried
it, do so.
Guns, Germs, and
Steel/ Jared Diamond
A bold examination of a very simple question: why wasn't
the Old World conquered by the New? Diamond makes a fascinating guide through agriculture,
epidemiology, technology, and related fields in the course of framing his answer.
I Have Landed/
Stephen Jay Gould
The final collection of Gould's essays from Natural History magazine, and a
satisfying capstone to his career. When it comes to explaining science to an
audience of educated laymen, you won't find a better or more affable professor,
or one who appreciates life more.
The Red
Hourglass: Lives of the Predators/ Gordon Grice
Journalist Grice has a passion for the little things in
life: spiders and snakes, mainly. In this quirky and vividly described natural
history, he shares his fascination and his experiences with the world's smaller
predators, from the widow to the recluse to the lizard.
Confederates in the
Attic/ Tony Horwitz
The best examination of the modern South I've come across.
Horwitz goes back to the Confederacy, sometimes by joining its re-enactors, in
the course of trying to figure out what makes the South so Southern. An unblinking
but even-handed look at America and Americans.
Under the Banner
of Heaven/ Jon Krakauer
Ever keen to understand the extremities of human behavior,
Krakauer here tells two connected stories: the bloody and extraordinary history
of the LDS church, and the murder of a woman and infant by two members of a
breakaway Mormon sect. His question: does God talk to humans? And if so, what
should we do about it?
Endurance:
Shackleton's Incredible Journey/ Alfred Lansing
The gripping saga of the ill-fated Antarctic voyage of the Endurance and its commander's
increasingly desperate attempts to save his crew and get them home. A fantastic
and unforgettable tale told with a panache and skill to rival its subjects'.
The Founding Fish/
John McPhee
There's not a subject under the sun McPhee can't make
interesting, but when it's his personal passion--the shad, a game fish unlike
any other--the reader's interest is swept smoothly to new heights. A delightful,
informative, and engaging read.
The Executioner's
Song/ Norman Mailer
Arguably a book that should have been listed in Fiction,
this account of murderer Gary Gilmore's life, crime, trial, and execution is a
masterpiece of biography. Mailer's novelistic prose crackles with energy, and
the depth of his passion for his subject is astonishing.
The Metaphysical
Club/ Louis Menand
A great book about post-Civil War intellectualism? Really?
Yes, really, a corker: the collective biography of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.,
William James, and their cohorts, and how they viewed the connection between
ideas and human lives. It won the Pulitzer for a reason, folks.
The Republican
War on Science/ Chris Mooney
It may be a little dated--I hope it's a little dated--but as an act of journalism, Mooney's
relentless assault on the Bush administration's science policies has to rank
among the decade's best. If you love science, this book is for you, and if you
needed another reason to hate Dubya, here are plenty.
The Big Year/
Mark Obmascik
Three birders gear up and head out to see more bird species
in a single calendar year than anyone else ever has. Obmascik's own birding
mojo is strong, but it's his journalistic chops and sparkling prose that make
this tale of obsession so funny and so true.
The Botany of
Desire/ Michael Pollan
A thoughtful, intriguing musing on the main reasons human
beings grow plants, and the history of four plants grown for those reasons: for
beauty (tulips), for sweetness (apples), for utilitarianism (potatoes), and for
intoxication (marijuana). Informative and fascinating.
The Song of the
Dodo/ David Quammen
I've said it before and I'll say it again: the best
science book I've ever read. Quammen's journalistic training gives him the
ability both to tell a story and to explain a complex concept (such as island
biogeography) with clarity. Touching, thrilling, important: a modern
masterpiece.
Fast Food Nation/
Eric Schlosser
Sure, it's unhealthy for you personally, but Schlosser's
got the business-reporter chops to show why fast food is also unhealthy for the
economy and the country. Whether it's workplace safety, public sanitation, or
labor relations, the dark side of the golden arches is on full display.
The Partly-Cloudy
Patriot/ Sarah Vowell
Droll, insightful, self-deprecating, and delightfully
obsessed by the details of American history and civics, Vowell is the perfect
hostess for a conversation about the modern American mindset. And with her
voice, you won't even mind that she does all the talking.
Consider the
Lobster/ David Foster Wallace
Wallace's suicide deprived us of a beautiful mind, a mind
that wouldn't stop examining an idea no matter how disturbing or improbable,
whether it's talk radio, video porn, the morality of boiling lobsters, or (in
the breathtaking "Authority and American Usage," which may be my favorite essay
ever) the role of the dictionary. And you'll never find a better or more
creative deviser of footnotes. Superb.
Some of these are obviously from well before the year
2000, but I only came across them in the last ten years, and hey, it's my list.
And I'm strictly sticking to one book per author here, so you'll just have to
trust me that such fabulous books as Byatt's The Biographer's Tale and Crace's Quarantine are well worth your time.
The Girl in a
Swing/ Richard Adams
A pleasant jolt, this one, even for a rabid fan of
Watership Down: a perfectly pitched tale of overwhelming love, shot through
with increasingly unsettling elements of supernatural horror. Not like anything
else I've read.
Oryx and Crake/
Margaret Atwood
Possibly the best science fiction novel I've read this
decade. Atwood has all the imagination and panache of the genre's best
practitioners, but she's also got wicked good prose skills and a keen eye for
structure.
The Stars My
Destination/ Alfred Bester
Good grief. HERE is a book that was ahead of its time.
First published in 1956, it seems utterly contemporary: a startling and
original tale of interstellar intrigue, with an antihero you'll never forget,
told in a style that treats the rules of SF as mild suggestions. Terrific.
World War Z: An
Oral History of the Zombie War/ Max Brooks
A simple enough horror story transformed into something great
by its structure: using a Studs Terkel-style group of narrators to recount
events that haven't happened yet, with a global view of the zombie menace,
quirky details, and memorable scenes aplenty.
Possession/
A.S. Byatt
A stirring tale of love, literature, and libraries, with
gorgeous faux-Victorian poetry and mysteries of research galore. This is not
only a gem of a book, but one that came very close to making me turn, when I
had finished, to read all 500+ pages again immediately.
The Amazing
Adventures of Kavalier and Clay/ Michael Chabon
I had a tough time picking between this and The Yiddish
Policemen's Union, but my love of the four-color universe gives this one the
edge: a rich and satisfying tale of two immigrants creating that most American
of art, the super-hero comic.
Being Dead/
Jim Crace
A gorgeous, heart-rending account of two parts of a couple's
life together: what happens after their murder in the dunes, and the long path
through life that they followed to that end. Stunning in structure, rich in
characterization, gorgeous in prose.
Little, Big/
John Crowley
A delightful, sprawling, wistful, disturbing dream of a
book, so full of rich details that they nearly spill out of the covers.
Fantastic in every sense of the word, and perhaps the best-ever book at
capturing both the fear and wonder inherent in the word "fairy tale."
Middlesex/
Jeffrey Eugenides
A deeply personal story that covers decades and continents
and oceans, all of it revolving around the astonishing, unlikely figure of Cal,
whose life itself sprawls over multiple genders and cultures. If John Irving had written Orlando, it might look
something like this.
The Graveyard Book/
Neil Gaiman
I've loved so many of his past writings that it seems almost
sacrilegious to say it, but this may be Gaiman's best book yet: alternately
nightmarish, soothing, sad, and hopeful, it says things about death (and life)
that ring completely true, even if they never happened.
High Fidelity/
Nick Hornby
If you have ever gotten into an argument about the world's
best bass player or written a top-ten list--ahem--this book is for you. A funny,
exasperating, and wholly believable novel about negotiating the shoals of pop
culture, romance, and adulthood.
The Lecturer's
Tale/ James Hynes
The center of one of the best discussions ever at
Readerville, Hynes' tale of an adjunct professor given magical powers is both a
hysterically funny satire of academia and a grand statement about identity.
Creative, witty, and utterly fearless in its execution.
The Debt to
Pleasure/ John Lanchester
A complete surprise, this: a tale of Epicureanism and crime,
gorgeously rendered in near-Nabokovian prose from the point of view of a
narrator that old Vlad might well have been happy to create. Check it out.
The Dispossessed/
Ursula K. Le Guin
Yes, it's a mid-70s examination of politics and culture
that obviously has its roots in the Cold War, but it's lost none of its potency
today. Le Guin's anthropological insights and speculations have never been framed
more perfectly, and her world-building remains peerless.
The Fortress of
Solitude/ Jonathan Lethem
A tale of city life, friendship, family trials, and 1970s
boyhood with all the trappings, but one whose rich detail is accompanied by a
startling turn toward the fantastic. Lethem's imagination is always at peak
form, but his strongest narrative weapon here is his memory.
The Road/
Cormac McCarthy
It ain't cheerful, but you're unlikely to find a more
beautifully rendered tale of life after the apocalypse than this one. McCarthy's
stylistic quirks can be off-putting for some, but his depictions of life's moral
and physical extremes make them insignificant.
Enduring Love/
Ian McEwan
Yes, the title sounds like a made-for-TV movie, but don't
be fooled: this is a superb book. In the aftermath of a bizarre balloon
accident, an ordinary man's life is turned upside-down by another man's seeming
fascination with him. Creepy, powerful stuff.
Lamb/ Christopher
Moore
The subtitle, "The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's
Childhood Pal," tells you it's a comedy based (loosely) on the New Testament,
but not that it's creative, loving, and even respectful of its subject. God
knows it shouldn't work, but it does.
Lolita/
Vladimir Nabokov
The prose. Oh, the prose. Even if the characters weren't
rich and believable and the story of Humbert Humbert's obsession completely
convincing, there would still be that thrilling, gorgeous prose. It's enough to
make you give up writing forever, knowing you will never write anything this
good.
Pale Fire/
Vladimir Nabokov
And yes, I'm violating my one-book-per-author rule,
because it's Nabokov, dammit, and this fantastic story of a poet, his self-appointed
literary executor, and the hallucinatory tale of politics and assassination
that surrounds them simply can't be left off this list.
Nation/ Terry
Pratchett
Freed from the constraints of the Discworld, Pratchett
delivers a home run: the saga of a young boy whose island home is devastated by
a tsunami, and the choices he and the ragtag survivors must make to preserve
their way of life. Hilarious and thoughtful, as usual.
Housekeeping/
Marilynne Robinson
The perfect book for a grey and rainy afternoon. Robinson's
account of a small town, a railroad disaster, and an unconventional family is
one you'll remember for a long, long time, even when it's sunny out.
The Terror/
Dan Simmons
It's a historical novel of the bold mariners called to
explore the polar reaches! It's a bloodcurdling tale of supernatural horror! It's
two great tastes that taste great together, featuring a single action sequence
that loses no steam over 25 pages. Read it! Read it!
Cryptonomicon/
Neal Stephenson
Imagine hyperactive triplets spawned by the unholy union
of a WWII epic and a cyberpunk novel: a shy codebreaker wrestling with Nazi
secrets, a computer jockey trying to create a data haven, and a Marine trying
to win the war in the Pacific. Have fun!
Triangle/
Katharine Weber
I spent much of this decade at Karen Templer's Readerville.com,
where I met many wonderful people who write wonderful novels, and I simply can't
fit all of them on this list. I can mention The
Book of Dead Birds by Gayle Brandeis, Wonder
When You'll Miss Me by Amanda Davis, The
Midwife's Tale by Gretchen Laskas, In
Open Spaces by Russell Rowland, More
Like Wrestling by Danyel Smith, Spilling
Clarence by Anne Ursu, and Sleep
Toward Heaven by Amanda Eyre Ward, but I know I'll have left someone off,
so I need one book to serve as a capstone for the whole bunch. That book is
Katharine's wonderful, heart-rending story of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire and those
still caught up in its ramifications today, much as I remain caught up in
Readerville after its demise. If you read it and love it as much as I did, give
some of these other Readervilleans' books a try.
There were plenty of comics that attracted my attention
(and even my money) during the past decade, but many were old favorites or just cheap
thrills. These offered more:
Fun Home/ Alison
Bechdel
In this memoir, Bechdel examines her father's life (and
death) as a closeted gay man even as she describes her own gradual coming out. A
home run: Moving, funny, thought-provoking, and deep, told with clarity and
beauty in deceptively simple black and white.
Astro City/ Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson, Alex Ross
The super-hero seen from the human point of view: a loving
reworking of the Marvel/DC tropes with a fresh point of view, a keen eye for
detail, and enough homages to satisfy the most demanding fanboy.
Lucifer/ Mike Carey, Peter Gross, Dean Ormston et al.
The best sustained fantasy comic of the decade. Carey's
Lucifer is pride on wheels, deadly and cruel, yet oddly admirable at times. Not
just a Sandman spin-off, but a bold
extrapolation from it.
Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E./ Warren Ellis,Stuart Immonen
Okay, okay, one
cheap thrill. But oh so worth it. Ellis and Immonen assemble a groupof third-rate Marvel heroes--even Machine Man,
for god's sake--for a pointedly self-conscious metanarrative about people in
tights beating things up. Repeatedly. Hilarious.
Transmetropolitan/ Warren Ellis, Darick Robertson
Possibly the best comics series of the 21st
Century, and certainly the best science fiction series. Spider Jerusalem, a
drug-popping journalistic crusader with a bowel disruptor gun, is turned loose
on a future full of technological and political perversion. Stand back.
Preacher/ Garth Ennis, Steve Dillon
A book so American only a Brit could write it: Texas
preacher Jesse Custer is unwillingly filled with unearthly power and goes on a journey
to find God and make Him explain Himself. Featuring blood, gore, demons, John
Wayne, and truly creative profanity.
The Cartoon History of the Universe/The Cartoon History of the Modern World/ Larry
Gonick
Anyone who's tasted the vinegar of textbooks will find Gonick's
brand of honey most appealing: carefully researched history that never fails to
keep its audience entertained even as it covers everything from the Big Bang to
the Renaissance to 9/11. Superb.
Identity Crisis/ Brad Meltzer, Rags Morales, Michael Bair
Not a commentary on or reworking of the Super-Hero, but that
rarest of stories: a super-hero narrative that you care about. Mystery writer
Meltzer sets up his tale as a whodunnit, but it's the characterization (along
with Morales' gorgeous art) that drives it.
From Hell/ Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell
Yes, it's from 1999, but I didn't read the collection
until this decade. A dark, unsettling retelling of the Jack the Ripper case,
told in excruciating detail in perhaps the only medium where that detail is remotely
tolerable. A carefully researched tour de force.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen/ Alan Moore, Kevin
O'Neill
Pretend the movie didn't happen. Instead, enjoy the
improbable thrills possible in a world where ALL of literature's adventurers coexist:
Allen Quatermain, the Invisible Man, Captain Nemo, Sherlock Holmes... it's like Disneyland
with a brain and a library card.
Top 10/ Alan Moore, Gene Ha, Zander Cannon
A police procedural that just happens to take place in a
city full of super-heroes... so the cops have to be super-heroes, too. A
ludicrous idea that never stops spinning off new ones (including the wonderful Smax mini-series), full of wonderful
characters.
Bone/ Jeff Smith
Smith's writing and art are so sophisticated that they
seem simple, hearkening back to the masterful work of Walt Kelly. In this tale
of three brothers trying to save a peaceful valley from monsters, you'll never
be bored, and you'll often be delighted.
Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood/ Marjane Satrapi
The story of the Iranian revolution, told from the point of
view of a teenaged girl growing up in the middle of it. Perhaps more relevant
now than ever, Satrapi's memoir is rendered in clear, accessible black and
white, and speaks to the fears and dreams of every person.
Y: The Last Man/ Brian K. Vaughan & Pia Guerra
A thrilling, funny, and daring tale with a very simple
premise: what happens after the death of every male mammal on earth? For Yorick
Brown and his pet monkey, the only exceptions, the answers are rather complicated.
If you like Joss Whedon, give it a look; Vaughan's dialogue alone is worth the price of admission.
The Adventures of Barry Ween, Boy Genius/ Judd Winick
If you like ludicrous plots, imaginative gadgetry, and
characters who use "fuck" and "shit" like prepositions, you'll love Barry and
his hyperactive conscience Jeremy dealing with life's little challenges:
bigfoots, aliens, gorillas, dinosaurs, time travel, and true love.
I'm not sure I have the energy for a Best-of-Decade list just yet, but one year? That I can do.
COMICS: It wasn't a banner year for comics; I didn't read
anything that took off the top of my head the way Fun Home did last year, though
I was pleased to see a few new goodies turn up, and I also finished the
last volume of an old favorite.
Preacher: Alamo/Garth Ennis, Steve Dillon
The aforementioned old favorite. The saga of Jesse Custer, Tulip
O'Hare, and Proynsius Cassidy wraps up in a satisfyingly
balls-to-the-wall explosion of blood, guts, grit, and mayhem.
All-Star Superman/Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely et al
Who would have thought that the loopy, optimistic spirit of the Mort
Weisinger era could be captured without the attendant aura of the
ridiculous? A wonderful job by Messrs. Morrison and Quitely, with
imagination galore and gorgeous execution.
We3/Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely
Despite the hyperviolence, this is a warm and emotionally satisfying
story that never stoops to anthropomorphism. Well, except for having
the animals talk. But that's part of the plot, so it's okay. Perhaps
the best thing Morrison has done since Animal Man.
FICTION: Here, on the other hand, I found a fair number of rich
and satisfying works, some of which were new, and some merely new to
me. Enjoy!
The Pesthouse/Jim Crace
A return to form after the somewhat opaque Genesis,
and another entry in the genre of the post-apocalyptic journey. Crace's
prose remains unimpeachable, and the details of this one will stick
with you like the jar of baby teeth in Being Dead
Ragtime/E.L. Doctorow
If he hadn't succumbed to the temptation to make this one Meaningful by
refusing to give the family members names, I might like it even better.
Still, it's a beautifully constructed tragedy and a fascinating
examination of a time. Oryx and Crake/Margaret Atwood
Damn, she's good. And if anyone dares to claim it's not science fiction, I will hurt you. A spectacular work of imagination and narrative.
The Graveyard Book/Neil Gaiman
I'm a stone Gaiman fan, and have been for two decades. But this may be the best thing he's done yet.
Lavinia/Ursula K. Le Guin
Who but Le Guin could find so much to say about a character barely
mentioned by Virgil? In her hands, even the old character-meets-author
trope seems fresh and deep. 20th Century Ghosts/Joe Hill
A wide variety of short stories, ranging from horror to straight
fiction to fantasy, anchored by the breathtaking "Pop Art," which is
probably the best story I've read in the last decade. Stunning stuff. Little Brother/Cory Doctorow
The best mix of cyberpunk, dystopianism, politics, and YA fiction I
could imagine. A book you'll want everyone in high school to have read.
NONFICTION: A fairly good year, peppered with a couple of gems.
Since I do so much reading in NF, I was actually a little surprised
this part of the list wasn't longer.
Best American Essays 2008/Adam Gopnik, ed.
The essays are good ones, obviously, but Gopnik's introduction is what
gets this onto the list. Plainly put, it's one of those statements
about writing that makes you want to either write something brilliant
or give up writing forever.
Columbine/Dave Cullen
An exhaustive account of one of America's worst days, with myth finely sifted away, leaving a stark and awful truth behind.
Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever/John Scalzi
I love Scalzi's fiction, but his blog is even better, and this culls the best entries from that blog. If you do nothing
else, buy this one to read his account of his trip to the Creation
Museum. Best. Blog. Post. EVER.
The Cartoon History of the Modern World, Vol. 2/Larry Gonick
And one more great work wraps up at last: the groundbreaking Cartoon
History of the Universe comes to its final resting place here, in the
ashes of the WTC, and frees Gonick to pursue other projects. Terry
Jones said it best: "Obviously one of the great books of all time."
Here's hoping there's at least as much good stuff in 2010.
One of my resolutions for this year is to write in this thing more often. I need the practice. Unfortunately, it doesn't mean you're going to get a fully-formed and in-depth essay every day. Some days you'll just get goofy shit like this:
Where I Slept In 2009:
1) Woodberry Forest, VA 2) Wytheville, VA 3) Chattanooga, TN 4) Point Clear, AL 5) New Orleans, LA 6) Vicksburg, MS 7) Memphis, TN 8) Roanoke, VA 9) White Lake, NC 10) Fayetteville, NC 11) Chapel Hill, NC
A fairly southeast-heavy year for me, but at least five of the places were new to me.
Snapped right out of that lull, didn't ya?
*admires shiny new story some more*