The four best novels I read in 2020.
It could hardly have been predicted that the author I would read the most of in 2020 would be Erle Stanley Gardner, followed closely by John Dickson Carr. And yet in retrospect it makes total sense. Below are all the books I finished in 2020, in the order I read them.
Cocktail Time, P.G. Wodehouse
Nothing like a little Wodehouse to dispel the New Year’s blues. Right now I’m reading D.M. Thomas’s Alexander Solzhenitsyn: A Century in his Life, and it’s having roughly the same effect.
Flow My Tears The Policeman Said, Philip K. Dick
The Finishing Stroke, Ellery Queen
Star, Yukio Mishima
Patti Smith recommended this somewhere, I consider her taste pretty much faultless, so I picked it up, it did not disappoint. Haven’t looked into Mishima since I was 15, he’s good!
The Blue Flowers, Raymond Queneau
The Last Thing He Wanted, Joan Didion
A work-related reading, preparing to review the film version.
Are Snakes Necessary?, Brian DePalma and Susan Lehman
Shills Can’t Cash Chips, Erle Stanley Gardner (as A.A. Fair)
Double Feature, Donald E. Westlake
The Burnt Orange Heresy, Charles Willeford
A re-reading, again prepping for a film review.
The Passion According to G.H., Clarice Lispector
A metaphysical exploration hinging on one woman’s interaction with a cockroach. Filed under Books My Wife Will Never Read.
Death in the Afternoon, Ernest Hemingway
I was moved to read this because of a bit in Burnt Orange Heresy where the skeevy protagonist complains to his future murder victim that she sounds like “the old woman” in this. Anyway a pretty singular book.
My Name Is Bill, Susan Cheever
The Crooked Hinge, John Dickson Carr
The Little Review “Ulysses,” James Joyce, edited by Robert Scholes, Sean Latham, and Mark Gaipa
The Saint In New York, Leslie Charteris
Surprisingly awful. One and done for this series.
The Call of the Wild, Jack London
Cops and Robbers, Donald E. Westlake
Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
On the recommendation of Benjamin Dreyer, who also has unimpeachable taste.
Three Tales, Gustave Flaubert
The Aesthetics of Resistance Volume 2, Peter Weiss
I’m gonna keep my powder dry on the “best novel ever” pronouncement until the translation of Volume 3 comes along.
The Duchess of Langeais, Honore de Balzac
The Flower Beneath Her Feet, Ronald Firbank
Smallbone Deceased, Michael Gilbert
Barley Patch, Gerard Murnane
Oswald’s Tale, Norman Mailer
Good stuff!
My Duck Is Your Duck, Deborah Eisenberg
Wanted to catch up on some Eisenberg before seeing Let Them All Talk, she’s delightful.
We Think The World of You, J.R. Ackerley
The Storyteller Essays, Walter Benjamin
Witch Grass, Raymond Queneau
Fin du Siecle Vienna, Carl E. Schorske
Nostromo, Joseph Conrad
Lolly Willowes, Sylvia Townsend Warner
The Mad Hatter Mystery, John Dickson Carr
Death Sentence, Maurice Blanchot
Sentimental Education, Gustave Flaubert
Death’s Jest Book, Thomas Bellowes
For Whom The Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
People talk lots of smack about this book but I was moved. And admired the writing a lot.
The Galton Case, Ross Macdonald
Selected Prose of Heinrich Von Kleist
Essential.
Castle Skull, John Dickson Carr
In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, William H. Gass
An Introduction to Metaphysics, Martin Heidegger
Guy was a Nazi! He BARELY tries to hide it here! No really!
The Floating Opera, John Barth
Finally. Now I can read Letters.
The Bell, Iris Murdoch
She’s great! Look forward to more books by this author, as we used to say in third grade.
The Overstory, Richard Powers
Antkind, Charlie Kaufman
I was crazy about this book for maybe a month. And then I’m Thinking of Ending Things compelled me to restrospectively hate everything Kaufman has ever put his name to. Anyone wanting to dangle modest amounts of money before me to explain further is invited to do so. I will not hold my breath.
Assumption, Percival Everett
A Bill Ryan recommendation. The book is dynmite, as is the author.
Hag’s Nook, John Dickson Carr
G., John Berger
Too Much and Never Enough, Mary Trump
Nailed it!
The Case of the Baited Hook, Erle Stanley Gardner
Remain In Love, Chris Franz
Woodcutters, Thomas Bernhard
He does SO have a sense of humor.
The Case of the Careless Kitten, Erle Stanley Gardner
Heidegger’s Silence, Berel Lang
His Master’s Voice, Stanislaw Lem
Erasure, Percival Everett
Levels of Life, Julian Barnes
The Case of the Dubious Bridegroom, Erle Stanley Gardner
The Case of the Gilded Lily, Erle Stanley Gardner
The Case of the Terrified Typist, Erle Stanley Gardner
Becoming Duchess Goldblatt, Anonymous
Old Boys, Charles McCarry
The Great Hotel Murder, Vincent Starrett
Music and the Myth of Wholeness, Tim Hodgkinson
All the Devils Are Here, Louise Penny
Wagnerism, Alex Ross
Faboo.
Jack, Marilynne Robinson
Whew.
No Room at the Morgue, Jean-Patrick Manchette
Maybe my favorite Manchette.
Hitler: Downfall, Volker Ullrich
This fuckin’ guy.
The Getaway, Jim Thompson
Turn on the Heat, Erle Stanley Gardner (as A.A. Fair)
Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather
Whew.
Here There and Everywhere, Geoff Emerick
Ornette Coleman: The Territory and the Adventure, Maria Golia
The Silence, Don DeLillo
I don’t want to fall back into my reviews-of-reviewers habit but man there was a ton of boat-missing on this one, just because he’s Don DeLillo.
The Volunteer, Salvatore Scibona
Inside Story, Martin Amis
As I said somewhere else, a longform version of Jim Carroll’s “People Who Died,” and just as emotionally searing. I don’t want to fall back into my reviews-of-reviewers habit but man there was a ton of boat-missing on this one, just because he’s Martin Amis
The Camera Lies: Acting for Hitchcock, Dan Callahan
My friend’s excellent book about a vital topic.
Surfeit of Suspects, George Bellairs
Mr. Sammler’s Planet, Saul Bellow
Every time I read Martin Amis on literature I think, I really ought to try Saul Bellow again, and I do, and I hate it. This time I didn’t hate it. WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME
A World of Love, Elizabeth Bowen
The Case of the Green Eyed Sister, Erle Stanley Gardner
Some Do Not…, Ford Madox Ford
I thought I’d embark on a Year of Lost Novels, and I thought I’d start with Ford’s roman fleuve, divided into four separately titled volumes. If I’d read this thirty years ago, I might not have considered its main characters concerns so utterly alien. It’s weird spending 900 pages with one part of your brain saying “JUST GET A FUCKING DIVORCE” while of course understanding that the whole point of the exercise is the transformation of post-Victorian man who’d rather be a 17th-century man into something like a modern man. Great prose, maddening approach to narrative, and JUST GET A FUCKING DIVORCE. I will never understand why Ellen Willis of all people designated this her desert island/fallout shelter book.
They Just Seem a Little Weird: How KISS, Cheap Trick, Aerosmith, and Starz Remade Rock And Roll, Doug Brod
My friend’s excellent book about a vital topic.
The Santa Klaus Murder, Mavis Hay
As advertised
No More Parades, Ford Madox Ford
Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life, John Gray
Highly recommended. Stretch out, people.
The Case of the Lazy Lover, Erle Stanley Gardner
A Man Could Stand Up, Ford Madox Ford
The Last Post, Ford Madox Ford
The End of Me, Alfred Hayes
The Case of the Lonely Heiress, Erle Stanley Gardner
As always, these entries make up an incredible resource for which I am extremely grateful.
I think the only overlap for me is that I also read The Blue Flowers this year, and it was one of the most fun novels I’ve read in a long time. I’m interested if you read the novel in French or English; I read English and I’d be interested to know how much of Queneau is lost in translation.
Re: I’m Thinking of Ending Things, I thought the film was just decent, but I might be estimating it that way relative to the book, which I read in preparation for the film and… it’s one of the shittiest books I’ve ever read. Hard to think of a reading experience which offered less.
As someone who cherished Eternal Sunshine more than most American-made films of its decade (though I haven’t watched it in several years now), I do hope the Ebert folks, or another distinguished outlet, will soon pony up for the lowdown on this retroactive mass devaluation. Maybe that film could even be chalked up as an outlier for its playful romanticism, and thus exempt? I’ve also yet to watch Ending Things, but can definitely see how the first two movies he directed might lead anyone to the conclusion you’ve reached. (Still recall Kent Jones’s year-end appraisal of Synecdoche: “Disappears up itself almost the moment it begins.”)
Sorry if I’ve diverted a book post with vague special pleading, but this kind of epiphany (if that’s the word) is something that fascinates me greatly in film criticism – canons built to be demolished and remade for sometimes-unforeseen reasons. In any event, wishing a blessed New Year to you and yours!
It’s Stella Gibbons not Stella Gibson – the latter being Gillian Anderson’s character on “The Fall”
Moose: Fixed.
Thanks Andrew. Short version of my complaint, which is not unrelated to Kent’s (and which I already put in a Facebook comment): “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” definitively laid bare Kaufman’s snide contempt for everything not germane to Kaufman and his genius. Every single sultural reference had a singular subtext: “This, which was not created by Charlie Kaufman, is shit.”
I don’t know how I’ll feel about “Eternal Sunshine” if I ever watch it again.
“ ‘The Galton Case’ Ross Macdonald”
Rediscovering the Lew Archer novels, which I devoured in college, has given me a lot of reading pleasure this year.
And after reading Geoffrey O’Brien’s “Hardboiled America,” I need to track down all the other noir authors from Macdonald’s era.
How did you enjoy Cops and Robbers, and The Overstory? Two books I’ve acquired but haven’t read yet.
“Cops and Robbers” was fun, not quite God-level Westlake but enjoyable. “The Overstory” began dragging on me after a while. It’s worthy and provocative but it keeps reiterating its central point in a way that’s tiresome despite your knowledge of the fact that the point needs endless iteration.
Do you really think the brief discussion of D. F. Wallace conveys the subtext that Wallace is shit?? I don’t. I also get the impression that Kaufman thinks quite highly of Rodgers & Hammerstein.
Yeah, I do — I wouldn’t say so if I did not. And lest you think I’m taking things personally or anything, it’s not just the Wallace reference — as I also said, it’s every reference. Including the Rodgers and Hammerstein, maybe especially the Rodgers and Hammerstein; that sequence pretty plainly sneers at the duo’s aspirations in “Oklahoma!”
I find that interpretation baseless and delusional! The film is suffused with love.
Love for Charlie Kaufman, sure.