Words, Words, Words: My readings of 2018

Michael Curtiz: A Life in Film by Alan K. Rode 

Curtiz dir­ec­ted so many pic­tures that a truly com­pre­hens­ive account could have devolved into tedi­ous box-checking. Rode does an admir­able job bal­an­cing nar­rat­ive momentum with crit­ic­al per­spect­ive, break­ing down how Curtiz could bring a cine­mat­ic dynam­ism to the least prom­ising mater­i­al. He does­n’t shirk from Curtiz’s poor (auto­crat­ic, mono­ma­ni­ac­al, almost con­sist­ently amor­al) char­ac­ter either. 

The Memoirs Of Two Young Wives by Honoré de Balzac, trans­lated by Jordan Strump

Pretty juicy epis­tolary nov­el but maybe not the best Balzac starter.

Nobody Runs Forever

Ask The Parrot

Dirty Money all by Richard Stark

A very sat­is­fy­ing end run for Stark/Westlake’s unbeat­able Parker series. I don’t find ser­i­ous fault with any of the Parker books, but I admit I could see, from 1997’s Comeback to 2002’s Breakout, the author strain­ing a bit to fit the nearly primev­al Parker into the mod­ern world of cyber-crime and that sort of thing. In these three books Stark/Westlake stops try­ing and returns to first prin­ciples and the res­ults are delight­ful. The last page of Parrot is as good as any­thing Westlake ever achieved. 

Ezra Pound Poet: The Epic Years

Ezra Pound Poet: The Tragic Years both by A. David Moody

Epic, tra­gic. An advoc­ate for his sub­ject, Moody often bends over back­wards to justify/rationalize Pound’s more argu­ably unfor­giv­able statements/choices but over­all he’s pretty per­suas­ive. It’s one of those stor­ies where as much as you under­stand the grave injustices com­mit­ted, you can­’t ima­gine it unfold­ing any oth­er way. 

The Pisan Cantos by Ezra Pound

The edi­tion edited and annot­ated by Richard Sieburth. To be hon­est I still can­’t say I’ve fin­ished it yet. Is it even fin­ish­able? A mono­lith of mod­ern­ist dens­ity and human suffering. 

Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday

A good read, and meaningful. 

Chicago by David Mamet

As Mamet nov­els go, it’s way bet­ter than Wilson. It begins as prom­ising genre exer­cise and ends as a pedant­ic convulsion. 

God Save The Mark by Donald E. Westlake

A neces­sary pal­ate cleanser after the Mamet. B+ Westlake, bet­ter than most such writers’ As.

System of Dante’s Hell by Amiri Baraka

Not exactly what I was expect­ing but pretty damn great.

Sharp by Michelle Dean

Dean’s sur­vey of female thinkers/critics is crack­ling, illu­min­at­ing, and clev­erly con­struc­ted. The author, a friend, has writ­ten a book both (I hate to use this word but it fits here) neces­sary and entertaining. 

Carla Bley by Amy C. Beal

An excel­lent aca­dem­ic study of one of my favor­ite composers/musicians. I am not adept enough to have got­ten all of the tech­nic­al stuff in its ana­lys­is but I still learned much. 

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

A “where have you been all my life” book

The Little Red Chairs by Edna O’Brien

It did not quite hook me as I’d hoped it would, although its har­row­ing final third is really something

The Chandelier by Clarice Lispector

Lispector’s mode here com­bines stream-of-consciousness with an almost par­al­lel contemplation/analysis of said con­scious­ness. Not easy sled­ding but awesome

The Silent Woman by Janet Malcolm

On Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes and oth­ers. One of sev­er­al books that Sharp tipped me off to. Great.

Space Odyssey by Michael Benson

Extremely enjoy­able of course. I still wish I could find that crazy paper­back Jerome Agel put togeth­er though. 

The Company She Keeps by Mary McCarthy

Another Sharp pickup, also great. 

Border Districts by Gerald Murnane

Best act of lit­er­ary leger­de­main I’ve wit­nessed in some time. 

Caddyshack by Chris Nashawaty

My old friend and col­league Chris did a fine job on the mak­ing of a film I’m kind of inor­din­ately fond of.

Barney’s Version by Mordecai Richler

A recom­mend­a­tion from Robert Gottlieb’s Avid Reader. Funny but in sev­er­al respects overfamiliar. 

Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History by Steven J. Zipperstein

Philip Roth recom­men­ded this in an inter­view. It did not dis­ap­point. Tight, cogent, spec­tac­u­larly researched. 

The Mise en Scene by Claude Ollier

Decent early-ish New Novel. 

Absence of Mind by Marilynne Robinson

Everything she writes is worth reading.

Transit

Kudos both by Rachel Cusk

I think Transit is the best of the tri­logy begun with Outline. Questions of “autofic­tion” and women’s writ­ing and all that not­with­stand­ing, Cusk’s knack for the How We Live Now philo­soph­ic­al conun­drum and her dry pel­lu­cid writ­ing make for much read­erly intrigue.

Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968 by Ryan H. Walsh

I think one reas­on Greil Marcus does this kind of “everything is con­nec­ted” cul­tur­al history/analysis bet­ter than Walsh man­aged here is not just due to Marcus being a bet­ter writer—it’s also a mat­ter of con­fid­ence. Other writers have dis­sec­ted Marcus’ ostens­ible errors bet­ter than I’d be able to sit­ting here in my in-laws’ kit­chen and I’m not inter­ested in pos­ing a ref­er­en­dum here. But Marcus puts it on the page with such author­ity that the con­nec­tions he draws seem, to use a favor­ite word of many, thrill­ing. Walsh’s too often seem like what they are: implausible. 

Keith Rowe The Room Extended by Brian Olewnick

An excep­tion­al bio­graphy of the exper­i­ment­al musi­cian that, among oth­er things, puts paid to the notion that the avant-garde is the express ter­rit­ory of the bour­geoise aca­dem­ic. Olewnick unearths Rowe’s extreme working-class roots (think How Green Was My Valley minus “Green,” or any­body ever hav­ing any fun, ever, etc.) and shows how Rowe’s sens­ib­il­ity con­nec­ted later to a polit­ic­al eth­ic. Along with that is an enga­ging story of how Swinging London floated some avant-garde boats that nev­er would have got­ten out of the dock oth­er­wise, and acute music­al analysis. 

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

A true cork­er, and in some unex­pec­ted ways. 

The Nature Of The Beast by Louise Penny

More fun with Inspector Gamache.

A Memoir Of Gaudier-Brzeska by Ezra Pound

Very much a product of its prop­erly indig­nant time. 

Basic Black With Pearls by Helen Weinzweig

As auda­cious as advertised. 

Our Spoons Came From Woolworths by Barbara Cornyn

Grim, com­pact.

Room To Dream by David Lynch and Kristine McKenna

He does­n’t tell what the Eraserhead baby is, but the book is still rev­el­at­ory and delightful.

Blitzed by Norman Ohler, trans­lated by Shaun Whiteside

Reading between the lines you see that Ohler applied a good deal of spec­u­la­tion to the doc­u­ment­a­tion he unearthed; nev­er­the­less, he makes his case. I won­der if the second volume of Volker Ulrich’s Hitler bio­graphy will draw from Ohler at all. 

Understudy for Death by Charles Willeford

There’s more enthu­si­asm in the writ­ing than the plot­ting in this newly unearthed Willeford, and that’s just fine. 

Runnin’ With The Devil: A Backstage Pass to the Wild Times, Loud Rock, and Down and Dirty Truth Behind the Making of Van Halen by Noël Monk and Joe Laydon

As advert­ised. 

The Three Ecologies by Felix Guattari

Boy are we screwed. 

Last Stories by William Trevor

Also as advert­ised. Finely wrought and heart­break­ingly true, but it also makes you won­der how the hell Trevor con­jured him­self out of bed in the morning. 

Reminiscences Of An American Composer and Pianist by George Walker

I picked this up, and a good deal of Walker music, after hear­ing Ethan Iverson and Miranda Cuckson play a Walker piece at their won­der­ful June show at Brooklyn’s Spectrum. Ethan read a pas­sage in which Walker’s grand­moth­er recalled he life as a slave: “They did everything but eat us,” she told her grand­son. Walker’s remin­is­cences are dry, very no-nonsense, and very much the work of a man who knows his own mind. He does­n’t explore in expli­cit terms the mean­ing of an African-American musi­cian immers­ing him­self in European clas­sic­al music; he makes impli­citly clear that (among oth­er things) for him the mean­ing of the work is the doing of the work. I’ve been very rewar­ded too by the CDs of Walker’s work I’ve acquired. This excel­lent inter­view with Walker, con­duc­ted by Ethan, is an excel­lent jumping-off point. Walker died at age 96 in August. 

The Outsider by Stephen King

The first sec­tion of the nov­el builds up a mys­tery with a ten­sion that’s prac­tic­ally excru­ci­at­ing. It’s almost under­stand­able that King breaks the thread — sus­tain­ing this for a full 500 pages or so is almost too much to ask. The rest of the book held my atten­tion and gave me a lot of pleas­ure but man, those first 120 pages or so…

The House Of The Dead: Siberian Exile Under the Tsars by Daniel Beer

I don’t remem­ber if it was this or Pogrom that inspired my friend the Self-Styled Siren to grieve over my grim read­ing habits. And yup, this is grim. But it’s also really fas­cin­at­ing and an apt pre­quel, so to speak, to the much more idio­syn­crat­ic Gulag Archipelago. 

Other Traditions by John Ashbery

Adapted from a series of lec­tures. Here Ashbery holds forth, with typ­ic­al eru­di­tion but also a rel­at­ively relaxed timbre, on idio­syn­crat­ic poets who exer­cised some influ­ence on Ashbery’s sens­ib­il­ity if not his actu­al prac­tice. The well-known Ashbery hobby­horse Raymond Roussel is rep­res­en­ted; this also set me off in search of Thomas Lovell Beddoes and John Wheelwright.

Records Ruin The Landscape by David Grubbs

I’m slightly ashamed that it took me so long to get to this spec­tac­u­lar piece of cul­tur­al his­tory and cri­ti­cism, a book that among oth­er things did a spec­tac­u­lar job of explain­ing my own audio sens­ib­il­ity to me. 

Art, Mystery by Mayo Thompson

My friend Mayo, whose stew­ard­ship of The Red C/Krayola is but a small por­tion of his over­all artist­ic pro­file, was kind enough to have Drag City send me a copy of his limited-edition debut nov­el, a wry globe­trot­ting satire of cur­at­ori­al mis­de­mean­ors in the fine arts. 

That Was Something by Dan Callahan

The very excel­lent crit­ic and per­son Dan’s debut nov­el is a lovely and poin­ted memory play that is also very funny and pretty dirty. 

Travels With A Donkey in the Cévennes & The Amateur Emigrant by Robert Louis Stevenson

A friend who was trav­el­ing to the Cévennes men­tioned the first volume, allud­ing to the slim pos­sib­il­it­ies he’d find a friendly wel­come in the region. I was motiv­ated to return to Stevenson for the first time since child­hood and was rather glad I did. 

The Town by William Faulkner

Taking my own sweet time through the Snopes trilogy. 

Lyndon Johnson: The Path To Power by Robert A. Caro

Volume five isn’t close to fin­ished yet, so I feel I’ve got a leg up. I intend to tackle both two and three next year. 

An Anthology Of Pure Poetry edited by George Moore

Mentioned in the Ashbery, a nifty col­lec­tion that argu­ably does­n’t always strictly hew to Moore’s defin­i­tion of “pure,” but that’s part of the fun. 

Spring Torrents by Ivan Turgenev, trans­lated by Leonard Shapiro

Turgenev. He’s good. Check him out. 

Rod Serling: His Life, Work, And Imagination by Nicholas Parisi

I read this frus­trat­ing book because I was review­ing it, for Film Comment. 

Pale Horse Rider by Mark Jacobson

Nobody writes about the weird tendrils of American life like my hero (and pal, and Girlfriend Experience co-cast mem­ber) Mark. This invest­ig­at­ive semi-biography of con­spir­acy the­or­ist William Cooper is start­ling, fright­en­ing, funny, odd, and strik­ingly com­pas­sion­ate. A must.

The Solitary Twin by Harry Mathews

The late, great Mathews’ final nov­el is also an exem­plary work, a nesting-doll nar­rat­ive in the fine Oulipean tradition. 

Dark Lady of the Silents: My Life In Early Hollywood by Miriam Cooper and Bonnie Herndon

Because of the frank and dis­par­aging tid­bits on the back of the dust jack­et, I had this pegged as the silent-movie-actress ver­sion of Miles Davis’ auto­bi­o­graphy, and it kind of is. But it’s also strik­ingly dif­fer­ent, not only because she does­n’t call any­one a “mother­fuck­er.” It’s an enga­ging and valu­able win­dow into an era that’s very much mis­un­der­stood these days.

The Real Lolita by Sarah Weinman

Weinman, with whom I’m friendly, is an indefatig­able and end­lessly curi­ous research­er, and a search­ing, author­it­at­ive writer. This book goes into great detail on a real-life kid­nap­ping case that Humbert him­self cites in his Nabokov-contrived “mem­oir.” She also grapples with the respons­ib­il­ity of the artist in tak­ing off from actu­al events. I think she’s a little too hard on Nabokov but also that she asks a lot of the right ques­tions of him, and of readers. 

Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson

More har­row­ing than any of its film adapt­a­tions for sure. The Scottish-inflected dia­logue rewards, nay, demands close reading. 

A Great Reckoning by Louise Penny

Inspector Gamache meets Blue Murder at St. Trinian’s. Well, not really. One of Penny’s bet­ter con­triv­ances, served up with the usu­al self-seriousness, which she some­how makes a little more pal­at­able here. 

Bing Crosby Swinging on a Star: The War Years 1940–1946 by Gary Giddins

The incred­ibly long-awaited second volume of Giddins’ Crosby bio­graphy brought me more of that old unal­loyed pleas­ure than, I think, any oth­er book I read this year. He does­n’t soft-sell Crosby’s domest­ic fail­ings but instead exam­ines them with a clear-headed per­spect­ive and con­text. And his depic­tions of the sing­er­’s incred­ible gen­er­os­ity as both a home-front enter­tain­er and ambas­sad­or to the troops in Europe, and how “White Christmas” became THE army anthem of home­sick­ness before it became THE Christmas song are fas­cin­at­ing. It also got me listen­ing to old Crosby records again, nev­er a bad thing. 

Glass Houses by Louise Penny

I anti­cip­ated get­ting the new Kingdom of the Blind as a Christmas present so I wanted to be all caught up on the Gamache series. Well, I did not get Kingdom of the Blind as a Christmas present. 

The Count Of 9 by Erle Stanley Gardner

The good folk of Hard Case Crime have been reis­su­ing the Cool & Lam detect­ive agency yarns that ridicu­lously pro­lif­ic Gardner wrote under the pen name A. A. Fair. I nev­er got into Perry Mason (no reas­on) but thought I’d check this out on a whim (also to read some unself­con­scious genre fluff after the Penny, who could stand to be a little fluf­fi­er TBH) and was mod­er­ately sat­is­fied. Solid con­struc­tion, snappy dia­logue, lotsa old-school sex­ism, no fancy stuff. Put a stack of them in front of me and I could prob­ably con­sume them like pea­nuts, which might wind up being to my spir­itu­al det­ri­ment somehow. 

Kafka’s Last Trial by Benjamin Balint

A ter­rific­ally cogent account of not just the suit that determ­ined where a sub­stan­tial por­tion of Kafka’s archives would be housed, but of the vari­ous betray­als that made Kafka the giant of lit­er­at­ure he is today. A para­dox­ic­al tragedy that Balint wisely chooses to con­tem­plate with a schol­arly sobriety.

War and Peace (Volume 1) by Leo Tolstoy, trans­lated by Anthony Briggs

Second go-round with this, in a dif­fer­ent trans­la­tion than first time. Tolstoy. He’s good. Check him out.