with just over 24 hours left in the year, i’ve decided to make a year-end list like the cool kids. while i’m totally confident in my ability to pick the best, this will not be a best-of list, and here’s why:
having put out a book this year and done a lot of traveling to get the word out, i made a lot of writer friends. and of course, several people i already considered friends put books out this year. here is a simple list of those friends and their books:
- amelia gray, museum of the weird
- lindsay hunter, daddy’s
- adam levin, the instructions
- adam novy, the avian gospels
- jeff parker, the taste of penny
i truly believe that all of those books could hang with any of the books that follow (that is, they are objectively among the best of the year) (because i should be the one who decides these things) (i mean it) (and of course, i’ve made no secret of the fact that i think levin’s book is the best of many years), but now that we’ve established that, here is the breakdown:
best novels about middle-aged men who are losers, but not lovable losers, by authors who are not my friend
- next, by james hynes
- the ask, by sam lipsyte
these books had a lot of similarities — they’re both funny, they both focus on dudes who work in higher ed administration (which really hit close to home, given that i’m a writer for a university), they’re both black comedies, they both riff well on pop culture and current events, they’re both extremely well-written at the sentence level. it would be hard to choose between them. lipsyte’s book is somewhat tighter, and it deals with contemporary life in a more sophisticated way than his previous stuff, but while i admire the way he sticks to his vision, i did get the feeling (which i also got with venus drive, but did not get with homeland) that he likes to wallow in bleakness (i know this criticism might sound absurd coming from me) (but that’s because you’re reading me wrong) (i have a story about redemption, goddamit! it’s just before the one about how to abuse family members). hynes’s book, on the other hand, while a little baggier, has endless heart in its bleakness. unlike most of the reviewers, i found the ending preposterous, but so gutsy that that counts as a plus in this case. hynes is unacceptably underappreciated as a writer, whereas in recent years lipsyte has graduated to being simply underappreciated.
best novels about grown-ass men by authors who are not my friend
- the consequence of skating, by steven gillis
- firework, by eugene marten
this category doesn’t actually need the “authors who are not my friend” qualification, because i don’t really know anybody who writes about grown-ass men (though i’m trying, for real). i’ve said before that i’m getting sick of cute kid books, but i’m just as sick of novels about men who act like sitcom dads. trying to decide whether to go to applebees or chilis for dinner is not a plot.
gillis’s book was a surprise for me because i hadn’t read anything of his before. it’s about an actor recovering from a dope binge, but it doesn’t romanticize the drug aspect. it’s just a very detailed and psychologically perceptive account of a guy trying to get straight while also trying to realize his dream of staging a lesser-known pinter play. it’s written in a style that manages to be both aggressive and lyrical without being flashy. i had a few problems with the book — it’s set in a town meant to be the kind of artist’s paradise we like to imagine can be found in europe when it would have been just as effective set in ann arbor (where gillies lives, if i’m not mistaken), and there are a few riffs that, while well-executed, didn’t seem necessary to me. nonetheless, i can’t imagine why he’s not with a major press. though, given his work with dzanc and interest in philanthropy, maybe he just doesn’t want to be.
marten’s book — holy shit. it’s daring and brutal and it wouldn’t make sense if i tried to summarize it. what i will say is that i think his supporters in the small press community may be inadvertently hindering him. i saw the word kafkaesque applied to this book in more than one review, and while it’s appropriate if you’re a marxist lit critic, when you say kafkaesque, most readers will expect somebody to turn into a bug. this book explores a working class guy’s alienation in a way, and with an effectiveness, i haven’t seen before. we should set up a fund to distribute copies of it to anyone who has ever described him or herself as a realist.
weird note: these two books about grown-ass men, which came out within a month of each other and which i read within a month of each other, have shockingly similar endings.
brief interlude about all this dude shit
i know i’m supposed to come up with a list that has 51 percent women and 49 percent men. the fact is, this year i purposely sought out dudes. dudes who write about actual aspects of masculinity. and i don’t mean the macho stuff. my love of mccarthy and hannah is well established, but most of the people trying to write in their shadow sound fucking ridiculous, like they grew up in (in, not with) a king james bible without any guidance about what that book was meant to accomplish. this goes to a bona fide worry i’ve had for a long time now (a worry i’ve hinted at) that literature has nothing to do with real life. i don’t mean books should describe or reflect contemporary culture. i mean they should have relevance. i’m not gonna read freedom (i was reading franzen back when yer mama and daddy thought john irving was the great american novelist), but i guarantee that gulliver’s travels has more relevance to my life than anything franzen could write. we’ll talk about this later.
oh look, here comes a woman.
best collection of short stories by an author who is not my friend
pee on water, by rachel b. glaser
tough category, because my friends really took over this year, short-story wise. this book took me completely by surprise, but i ain’t gonna get into it here because i’m currently writing a real review of it. thanks to jonathan pappas and gene kwak for urging me to read it (jonathan gave me my copy).
best collections of poetry by authors who are not my friend
- the best of (what’s left of) heaven, by mairead byrne
- the city real and imagined, by ca conrad and frank sherlock
- adam robison and other poems, by adam robinson
i read a lot of poetry this year, but i’m not always as current with poetry as i am with fiction. like have you heard of this guy jack spicer? yeah, i’ve been reading the shit out of him lately, but only lately, because, though i was aware of him, i’d never seen his work until my vocabulary did this to me came out like 50 years after his death.
usually i have some kind of balance between cooked and raw, poetry-wise, but this was a raw year. (cooked-wise, i was really excited about ben lerner’s mean free path, but the form seemed to hamper the work. a good book, but somewhat disappointing after angle of yaw. also, i haven’t checked out timothy donnelly’s cloud corporation because i thought 27 props was waaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyy overcooked.)
anyway, if you are having a heart attack, anyone of these three books will revive you if you place it on your chest. also, my wife had me read the byrne book to her while she was in labor with wes, so there’s a sentimental value there, too. and someday there will be statues of conrad and sherlock in philadelphia, at least, and across the nation if the nation knows what’s good for it.
a collection of short stories, not written by a friend, that i bet would have made this list if i had read it
the spot, by david means
i wanted to check this out, but didn’t want to spend hardcover money on an author i’d never read. so i got the secret goldfish and loved it. so i got assorted fire events and loved it. will get the spot soon. for some reason i feel like means is my literary brother and yet i know he would not agree.
worst book i read that was published in 2010
season of ash, by jorge volpi
i got this because i didn’t believe it could be as bad as tom bissell said in his times review and because the topic actually sounded interesting. the book is worse than the review said. it’s like ayn ran for the lefty/cosmopolitan set.
two novels by jerzy kosinski that were not published in 2010 but that stomp all over everything published in 2010
- cockpit, by jerzy kosinski
- steps, by jerzy kosinski
levin sent me these early in the year and i read them right away. i will read them again, but it sucks that i can’t read them again for the first time. they should provide you perspective on why i worry about contemporary writing getting too milquetoast.
books i’m looking forward to in 2011
to tell the truth, none. i’m not trying to be an asshole here. i really don’t know what’s on the horizon. if you do, please tell me.
