Outside of the required high school Old Man and the Sea and Hills Like White Elephants reading, Ernie and I have not been too acquainted. A few years back, I read a short story (which I cannot remember), and it really made me appreciate his prose. I threw this title on a list and received it as Christmas present from my mom. (Side note: One year, I just sent my family a list of books I wanted for Christmas, and I received like twelve books. It was the fucking best. That's all I really want... plus the TIME to read them).
I'll cop to the fact that this is a male white privilege book, but as a person who is and has that, boy, is this novel relatable. The novel regales the ennui a man in his twenties possesses as he chases the highs of alcohol, adventure (bull-fighting! fly-fishing!), and love (not sex) through amazing European vistas. It's also supposed to be a comment on this so-called lost generation during the interregnum period, though of course Hemmingway doesn't know another war is coming.
His terse but effective prose recognizes his character (an ex-Pat swashbuckling journalist stand-in for himself) is full of shit and lacks real problems. But every day, the sun comes back up, and he has to face himself again. The sun inevitably rising again (which is a pull from the Bible) also signifies the insignificance of the melodrama playing out in the novel—your trivial bullshit ain't stopping tomorrow from coming. Grow up, but enjoy the moments you get.
2. The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle (2016) Paperback (Free Library)
A little bit of a tone shift from above, but this sci-fi, horror, crime novel hits all the right notes. LaValle reimagines an H.P. Lovecraft story from the perspective of a Black man, and boy is it excellent. Tom is a meandering guitarist hired to play a rich white dude's party in 1920s NYC. Some creepy, occultist shit happens, and Tom has to put all the pieces back together. LaValle straddles all the supernatural nonsense well, and the audience gets to ride along briskly in this novella with a bit of social commentary thrown in there.
3. A Children's Bible by Lydia Millet (2020) Paperback (h/t to Nate)
Environmental calamity sci-fi doesn't always hit with me (see The Water Knife below), but A Children's Bible, like all effective genre pieces, transcends the trappings to offer universal themes. Here, a bunch of rich families spend the summer in a fancy vacation beach home; the parents drink themselves to stupor in the house, while the kids explore nature. Then, a big storm happens, and eventually, society goes into the tank. Millet sets it up so well in that the children are the ones really dealing with the environmental fall-out, and the adults run around with their heads cut off and ultimately fade to oblivion. I'm gonna go run my car for a while, and my kids can deal with it later.
4. Play It as It Lies by Joan Didion (1970) Apple Books
A little BBBBBBBBBBBBook Club action! After my disastrous Bowlaway pick, I redeemed myself with this classic. And that's what it is, too! I've overlooked some of these mid-20th century writers to my detriment. Though this novel is held out as "literature," Didion's prose is totally accessible, as she writes deftly about contemporary topics. She really captures 1970s California as well as any later film or TV show would. Her micro-chapters describe a lot in a small amount of time. And she's funny as hell, though pretty bleak. Also, nothing better than a boys only book club sitting by fireplace on a rainy October weighing the merits of Didion's illegal abortion scene.
5. Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner (1971) Paperback
This one's a grower not a shower. A recently disabled and divorced professor moves back to his childhood home to write a novel about his grandparents' frontier life. The framing device works surprisingly well, as he jump between 1970s California (again!) and 1800s wild west. This won the Pulitzer Prize, and I can see why. Stegner captures the many hopes, resentments, compromises, and unspoken thorny patches over a long, occasionally happy marriage. His own divorce and the complicated love life of his caretaker are expertly juxtaposed against the pioneer story.
The Rest (ordered by preference):
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner (2021) Hardback
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (2015) Kindle (Free Library)
Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett (1929) Kindle (Free Library)
A Quaker Book of Wisdom by Robert Lawrence Smith (1999) Hardback
Lush Life by Richard Price (2008) Paperback
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1967) Paperback
Darktown by Thomas Mullen (2016) Hardback (Free Library)
The Water Knife by Paolo Baciagalupi (2015) Hardback (Free Library)
The Night of the Gun by David Carr (2008) Paperback (Free Library)
Perestroika in Paris by Jane Smiley (2020) Hardback
Archives
2021-22
- Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (2019) Paperback
- Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1934) Free Library, hardback
- South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami (1992) Paperback
- Every Man a Menace by Patrick Hoffman (2016) Paperback
- The Tomb of Atuan (1970) and The Farthest Shore (1972) by Ursula K. LeGuin (1970) Kindle, Library/Free Library, hardback
The rest: Zulekia Dobson by Max Beerbohm (1911) Hardback, Free Library; The Winshaw Legacy or What a Carve Up by Jonathan Coe (1994) paperback; The Lost Book of Adorna Moreau by Michael Zapata (2006) Libgen; Kudos by Rachel Cusk (2018) Free Library, hardback; The Good War by Studs Terkel (1984) Hoopla; The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow (1953) Kindle; Alright, Alright, Alright by Melissa Maerz (2020) Kindle;
2020-21
- The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (2001) paperback.
- The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley (1978) paperback.
- A Wizard of Earth-Sea by Ursula K. Le Guin (1968) paperback.
- Silesian Station by David Downing (2008) Kindle.
- The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett (2020) hardback
The rest: The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osma (2020) Apple Books; Calypso by David Sedaris (2018) paperback; Camino Winds by John Grisham (2020) hardcover; The Fever by Megan Abbott (2014) Kindle; Dune by Frank Herbert (1965) Kindle; The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil by Stephen Collins (2013) hardcover; A Sixers' Odyssey by Dave Rueter (2021) Kindle; Sabbath's Theater by Phillip Roth (1995) Hoopla.
2 comments:
Justice for The Sympathizer!
I might give The Sun Also Rises another chance. I read it in high school and, like so many other books, probably only hated it because it was required summer reading.
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