Despite my best efforts I failed to make it to the 50 mark this year but I am pleased with my performance nonetheless. I know why I didn't make it, I got too ambitious. The pseudo-intellectual side of me raged out and decided that I should be interested in all sorts of high brow books with interesting titles and fascinating subjects. If I had stuck to my meat and potatoes - science fiction with a little bit of mystery thrown in - I would have been closer to the mark.
I want to recognize some of my fellow 50-bookers for their efforts: Olman's 50 for some of the great authors he brought to light this year (Attlee and Canning); Meezly for her terrific, well written and thoughtful reviews; and Mount Benson for continuing to giv'er. I would also like to thank Opinion be Damned and Redwing for taking the time to read my blog: increasing your regular readership by 67% (from three to five) is great, just ask any newspaper man.
Happy new year and here's to 2009.
9 comments:
Awesome work. Considering some of the real life things going on, what you did is pretty impressive.
Happy new year!
Thanks for the shout out. I have really enjoyed reading your reviews and particularly interested in the classic sf.
Will there be a theme in 09?
Congrats on getting so far! But with regard to your analysis of the problem, I’m not sure you’re on the mark. You wrote, “I got too ambitious. The pseudo-intellectual side of me raged out and decided that I should be interested in all sorts of high brow books with interesting titles and fascinating subjects,” suggesting you should have stuck to sf and mystery to make the finish line.
But this begs the question of what the 50-book goal is for in the first place. Isn’t the whole point an incentive to read rather than to cross some arbitrary bar? And what the heck’s wrong with fascinating subjects? I mean, we don’t want to give in to “pseudo-intellectual” impulses; but intellectual ones? Yes, definitely, especially if it means also the heart and the gut and — why not? — let’s remember that our groin has its own mind too, and often the most discerning one.
My own reading swings pretty wildly — I chugged down everything from Lovecraft to Faulkner this year — but it was the classic and critically praised authors that really fucking thrilled me. I always have to drag myself kicking and screaming to pick up a book that’s good for me — air quotes — but when I do, fuck, it sends me over the moon. Moby Dick is truly and honestly a stunning read; Melville picks you up, throws you down, shows you the heavens, drags you through the dirt, kicks you in the balls, and, man, if you don’t feel like you came through the whole freaking journey right by Ishmael’s side, then you’re dead, brother, because, truly you did, you were right there, there’s no denying it, right next to him.
And when I finally cracked open Bellow — Bellow, your countryman, but I claim him too, an American, Chicago born — I was astounded, knocked off my feet, couldn’t get enough, his prose straight from the street, heartbreakingly honest, shot through with the most brilliant insights, three thousand years of intellect and philosophy on every page and still you smell the clay of humanity, the loam — is that what that word was made for? — humanity in your hand, damp, clammy, hummus, the stuff God himself used on the sixth day, I swear it, the fragrance and also the stink of it, amazing, Bellow gives you that. You can’t read Bellow and hope to make 50 books in a year — Augie March and Herzog aren’t for sprinters. But can you leave them off? No, no, you mustn’t, what would be the point, why read 50 books and no Bellow? It’s like visiting Jerusalem, but only the flat parts.
I read Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge — difficult, but, jesus, well worth the trouble — and lighter stuff, Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely — brilliant! — The Big Sleep — genius! — The Long Goodbye — a masterpiece! But also The Little Sister — a mess, forgettable, not worth the price of pulp. And contemporary writers, Michael Chabon, David Eggers, Ronan Bennett, Chuck Palahniuk — a mixed bag — and Jonathan Lethem — a towering genius. And Stephen Crane — christ, what can you say about this amazing writer who stands with Nietzsche in his ability to rip open the human heart and show it to us pumping, all its gore and beauty. And Faulkner; I bow.
But here’s the thing I wanted to say — I wanted to say something about “interesting titles and fascinating subjects” — that the critics are not so bad at picking good reads if you give them a few decades to sort themselves out. These dusty, cracking spines on our bookshelves — Dickens, Hawthorne, Proust, Salinger, Pinter, Orwell — they fucking sparkle, they really do, you blow the dust off and shake the silverfish over the sink and then, then... fuck — these old fuckers, they wrote. We forget sometimes that in the old days people fucked and sweated and cursed just like we do, and that they wrote about it honestly and well and fell asleep content or died unhappy and there it all is, on the page, and I swear, it crackles.
Looking over your reviews for the past year, it seems that the sf picks often garnered faint praise, while weightier books — Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest for example — engaged you. And then, of course, you barely read anything for the first five months — come June you’d only read eight books, not including stories about Grufallos — so there’s the question of pacing, I mean, it’s like walking the first ten miles of a marathon and figuring you’ll catch up later. Five months! You could’ve been reading Bellow!
Sometimes the names of great writers are worn thin by people talking about them so much. I hate it, too, hate to travel in all the same places that everyone else has gone, the same cafes, the same monuments, we’ve seen all the pictures already, let’s find someplace new. But the beauty of it is — and fuck these cretins for bandying around the names of saints so lightly — the writing itself isn’t worn thin. These books, these interesting titles, they’re still fresh, the hordes haven’t trampled them, there are no info kiosks in the chambers of Shakespeare. So I say, yes, sf, good, I’m all for it, there’s some incredibly good writing there. But interesting titles? Yes, please! Let us be intellectuals too.
I should have sandwiched interesting titles and fascinating subjects between quotation marks as I meant the reader to take them in a sarcastic tone. What I meant is that the books are interesting and fascinating in a pseudo intellectual way, like someone telling you how the latest exhibit at the MOMA is so interesting or the talk by doctor so and so was so fascinating.
I agree with you on the classics...some of those guys really could write and would smoke their current counterparts.
Oh. Never mind. Damn, I missed the irony, huh? I haven’t quite worked out this blogging stuff yet.
Also, I should’ve mentioned some great Iranian writers I’ve been reading — mostly short stories; it's hard to find translations of these guys in English. Do you ever read Persian works in the original? Talk about untrammeled places — fuck, that would be amazing. Hushang Golshiri’s “The Victory Chronicle of the Magi” is brilliant. I have to find more of him. And I’ve got a few books on request at the library I’m waiting for — Shusa Guppy’s The Blindfold Horse and Simin Daneshvar’s A Persian Requiem. There’s not enough time to read everything, even me with my wide open schedule. I mean, you can only read for so many hours, and then you’re full up, have to do something else. But a book a day for 2009 — that would be something, a nice high bar. Then we would have no choice but to start out by sprinting.
A book a day for 2009, now that would be good!
You should also check out Hedayat's Blind Owl.
Nice work getting to 43. That's damn impressive whatever you read, and when you read it.
I'm trying to get to 30 again this year, and I have already decided that this year, finally, I'm going to get through all the sea stories I have on the shelves. Chase my passion like Ahab chased the whale (nod to Opinion be Damned).
And I want to be a better blogger. More feeling and less static plot reviews and more guts. More me. You, meezly, Mt Benson, and Olman do a good job at that. Hmmmm...the Canadian Coterie...
So'nyway, Good work and I look forward to your 09 writings...
Buzby, your 43 humbles me. So do your reviews.
43 is impressive indeed, considering you've read both high and lowbrow. congrats!
and thanks for the props, buzby and redwing! but I still need to get my butt in gear for my remaining 2008 books and year-end wrapup!
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