No One is Talking About This.
Patricia Lockwood.
Riverhead Books. 2021. 224 pp.
ISBN 978-0593189580.
As an Internet addict and pro-abortion parent, I found this novel deeply relatable, and it left me in a puddle of tears. On the Internet: "To be involved in a consensual hallucination of normalcy is much worse than being mad."
Topics of Conversation.
Miranda Popkey.
Vintage. 2020. 224 pp.
ISBN 978-0525566366.
Sultry dialogues from the wine cellar in this formally inventive 2020 novel. Like when the Reality TV camera pans away and you still hear the drama, only the drama is real.
Meiselman: The Lean Years.
Avner Landes.
Tortoise Books. 2021. 420 pp.
ASIN B08MBHZFWX.
The story of a man who works at a public library and wants a better parking space. A young Joel & Ethan Coen should bring this to the screen. Made me think about the word circumambulation, the deity the sentence. I read this novel when I thought I was dying from OG covid and felt okay about it being the last book I would read. (Woody Allen reference: "He stopped at Blockbuster, where he rented Manhattan. His excessive laughter that night was faked.")
The Life of the Mind.
Christine Smallwood.
Hogarth. 2021. 240 pp.
ISBN 978-0593229897.
A study of ambient grief and an urgent reminder the mind/body problem is a woman's issue. Textbook for writing in the close third person. I guess that's the life of the mind.
For Now (Why I Write).
Eileen Myles.
Yale University Press. 2020. 96 pp.
ISBN 978-0300244649.
Minor work but still Myles for now. Read this lying on my back on the floor, wishing I was as cool as Eileen Myles.
The History of America in My Lifetime.
Brooks Sterritt.
Spuyten Duyvil. 2021. 220 pp.
ISBN 978-1952419041.
Deeply funny and moving quest for a man doing an impression of himself. Tender and over too soon, like the late Brahms on the turntable. Read this at the River House. Killed a few mosquitos with it, but not enough.
Fake Accounts.
Lauren Oyler.
Catapult. 2021. 272 pp.
ISBN 978-1948226929.
Choicest first word: consensus. This I-do-this-I-do-that novel reads like a true friend. Can I be an honorary ex-boyfriend? A tedious novel, and mundane, as its author once wrote in a book review of Megan Boyle's Liveblog. (Woody Allen reference: "I'd never really cared about New York the way other people did. I had only seen three Woody Allen movies, and I couldn't even tell you what happened in them.")
The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America.
Greg Grandin.
Metropolitan Books. 2019. 375 pp.
ASIN B076B2DNJL.
A cogent survey of this well-known story that America was like, Iraq was pretty boring—it gave us swell Kathryn Bigelow flicks but little else. So Donald Trump is like, Gals, gather round my wall. I'm bringing Indian Country back on the inside where it belongs. America roars.
The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable.
Amitav Ghosh.
The University of Chicago Press. 2016. 206 pp.
ASIN B01LF08CU8.
Read this book in Cafe Luigi on Clark Street. Things aren't looking so good for the planet, but at least we're getting good works out of it.
Visions of Cody.
Jack Kerouac.
Penguin Books. 1993. 408 pp.
ASIN B00C1KW9BK.
This novel written over decades is a smarmy mess at times, and a reminder the prophet is also the servant. Felt like I was at the right age to read it—three years younger than Kerouac when he died. Read it at Calo Ristorante and the Farm House.
Do Everything in the Dark.
Gary Indiana.
ITNA Press. 2015. 308 pp.
ISBN 978-0991219674.
Eternally under-the-radar 2003 New York novel (reprinted in 2015) about la vie bohème. Wish I would have read this right after college. Read it this year, tanning on the deck, waiting for a plane crash.
Proof of Stake: An Elegy.
Charles Valle.
Fonograf Editions. 2021. 78 pp.
ISBN 978-1734456660.
A longer poem about coming to terms with life after death. Read this during a hard day at work, and it made me feel better.
Body High.
Jon Lindsay.
House of Vlad Press. 2021. 188 pp.
ISBN 979-8746125088.
Instant Classic medium cool LA novel. Stupendous editing. Belongs on that shelf near the register so I don't steal it. (Woody Allen reference: "I've been picturing myself walking, rain-soaked, wearing a parka and Woody Allen eyeglasses, schlepping groceries...")
Luster.
Raven Leilani.
Picador Paper. 2020. 240 pp.
ISBN 978-1250798671.
Hard, like a cracked diamond. The first debut novel I've read since publishing Jenny in Corona that I like as much as Jenny in Corona. Rode the bus for no reason but to concentrate on this one.
Heroines.
Kate Zambreno.
Semiotext(e). 2021. 312 pp.
ISBN 978-1584351146.
You'll never look at "Once Again to Zelda" in the same way. Read this at the pool and in the pool.
The Complete Gary Lutz.
Gary Lutz.
Tyrant Books. 2021. 499 pp.
ISBN 978-1733535915.
One of those books where you learn the word "wibbling" could mean "speaking or writing vaguely at great length." Read it at the dining room table under a banker's lamp.
Book of Samuel.
Samuel, Gad, and Nathan.
Divine Word. 540 BC. ~85 pp.
One of the first novels, they say. The story within that most typifies how I feel about society right now is when David comes leaping and dancing home from the wars, like he just bought back his stocks, and his wife Michal stands in the doorway hands on hips, muttering, what the hell is he so happy about?
Leave Society.
Tao Lin.
Vintage. 2021. 368 pp.
ISBN 978-1101974476.
Lin, who is not a fan of Yahweh, delivers another predictably unique novel under the title of the year if not the young decade—leaving this Jamestown nightmare is the American Dream. No trigger warnings here, but see Template: Disputed on Wikipedia, itself a page under dispute. I read Leave Society in bed over Christmas break, dreaming I'd devoted my life to the novel the way Lin has. When you read this friendly, funny, and gentle novel in 2022, maybe the word you'll find most is "maybe," and maybe Lin's style—a tone predicated on a lucid knowledge of the difficulty of its own transmission, in critic Frank Guan's formulation—is so unique it reminds us of Woolf's praise of Lawrence: you never catch Lawrence arranging, and no sentence pretends to contain the meaning of the whole novel in it. Lin pulls this off in a blue green novel about, if nothing else, arrangements. And when I put the book down, I kept thinking about this one recent snag in the scroll, suggesting Literature is a story about a guy, and Literary Criticism the story of hating on that guy. Tao Lin knows Literature is both of those love affairs at the same time; or, when a man gets woke, you finally learn what he's got in his balls. (Woody Allen reference: "On day three, he saw the movie Irrational Man, then deep-breathed in a crowded plaza while waiting for his parents, who were in a Frankenstein movie.")
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