the top 15 books I read in 2011
#15: The White Album (Joan Didion, 1979) — I’d previously only read Play it as it Lays, which I think gave me the wrong idea of Didion; all that chic Hollywood nihilism, you know, not really my thing. But of course her nonfiction is great. The time-and-place specificity of these essays can be either thrilling (LOL @ fuckhead Jim Morrison) or boring (something about the L.A. freeway system in the ’70s…?) but always written with alarming insight and clarity.
#14: Wish Her Safe at Home (Stephen Benatar, 1982) — One of those NYRB salvage-jobs, rescuing a great novel from certain oblivion. Not that I’m some authority on such matters: this is the first NYRB release that I’ve read. But the label is getting mash notes from me on the strength of what I like to think of as a distaff Taxi Driver: lonely lady gradually loses her mind, loses herself to fantasy. Benatar’s masterstroke is to make his heroine genuinely charming enough that when she crosses that Rubicon of crazy, it really hurts.
#13: Samedi the Deafness (Jesse Ball, 2007) — Transparently influenced by Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, but with an oddly detached style that reads like a translation from some European language 80 years ago, the first novel by seemingly authentic weirdo Jesse Ball is a clever, creepy, totally engaging and oddly touching conspiracy story. You can probably read it in an afternoon, if you are prepared to have a really weird afternoon.
#12: Ubik (Philip K. Dick, 1969) — I don’t know, man, I read this in January so it’s been a while, don’t make me annotate Philip K. Dick. Is this the one where there’s a drug that…no. Something about dead people? Um, I loved it at the time.
#11: London Fields (Martin Amis, 1989) — A widescreen remake of Pale Fire, which I also read this year and didn’t like nearly as much as this. (Martin Amis: the Brian De Palma to Nabokov’s Hitchcock? No, that probably doesn’t make sense. Who cares?) There were stretches of this book when I had only the vaguest idea of what Amis was trying to communicate, but I loved every wit-choked sentence.
#10: The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories (Don DeLillo, 2011) — An all-killer-no-filler collection from America’s Greatest Living Novelist, who turns out to have secretly also been one of America’s Greatest Living Short Story Writers all along. DeLillo tries a little sci-fi in the astonishing “Human Moments in World War III” and catches up with the current world economic crisis in “Hammer and Sickle”—the two brightest highlights, but none of the nine is unworthy of DeLillo’s name or your time.
#09: The Instructions (Adam Levin, 2010) — I actually read most of this monsterpiece in 2010, but finished it in January. Surely the most ambitious book ever published by McSweeney’s, this thousand-page brick tackles the rabbit-hole of overanalytical thinking, the meaning and usage and consequences of violence (known in the book as “damage”), the conflicts of modern Judaism, the dynamics of armed rebellion… wait did I mention it’s set in a middle school and the main dude is like ten? And that it’s super funny? I have some major-ish reservations about the ending, but: not optional.
#08: The Martian Chronicles (Ray Bradbury, 1950) — For all of Bradbury’s gee-whiz midcentury romantic optimism, many of these stories are surprisingly mournful—tragic, even. And when the gee-whiz eventually wins the day, as it must, the victory is fully earned. Aside from all that, just marvel at the imagination. Classic status justified.
#07: White Jazz (James Ellroy, 1992) — The electrifying conclusion. Ellroy’s staggering “L.A. Quartet” comes to a close with its most stylistically radical volume, centered on the series’ most tainted and fully corrupt anti-hero—viewed from the inside out, this time, in fractured first-person. One of the Demon Dog’s best.
#06: We Need to Talk About Kevin (Lionel Shriver, 2003) — I spent a lot of my time with this book mentally complaining about how Kevin himself didn’t seem credible, was more fantasist’s teen bogeyman than realistic school shooter; I also got annoyed at the interjections of Shriver’s expat observations of What America is All About. But I just finished this book yesterday, and the ending was so thoroughly devastating that these qualms immediately ceased to mean anything to me. A really amazing achievement, once you can take in the whole shape of it.
#05: The Franchiser (Stanley Elkin, 1976) — An obvious attempt to write a Great American Novel for the ’70s, but no less great for that. Stanley Elkin may have been the best comic novelist of the 20th century. His 1967 novel A Bad Man would also be on this list if not for the fact that I’m only 100 pages into it as the calendar turns to 2012.
#04: Masters of Atlantis (Charles Portis, 1985) — Speaking of great comic novelists of the 20th century. Portis’ plunge into the silly world of cults and secret societies is sometimes a slow simmer of comic tension and sometimes an explosion of hilarity, but every page is bizarre, delightful and perfect.
#03: Out of Sheer Rage (Geoff Dyer, 1997) — Things I don’t care about: memoirs, travel writing, D.H. Lawrence. Things this book ostensibly is/is about: those things. Placement of this book on this list: #03. This will make perfect sense if you read this book.
#02: Remainder (Tom McCarthy, 2005) — More postmodern songs about simulacra and food. I don’t know why this stuff hits such a sweet spot for me, but this book is so addictively involving that the experience of reading it almost felt like playing a video game. Or being trapped inside one.
#01: Going Native (Stephen Wright, 1994) — I love the ’90s.
