2011 in Books Not Published in 2011 (Part 2)
“Anthropology and a Hundred Other Stories” by Dan Rhodes (2000). Dan Rhodes puts his mastery of the literary double take on display in this collection of a hundred and one funny and sad short short love and unlove stories each told in a hundred and one words. (Reviewed here.)
“Reportage on Lovers” by Quijano de Manila (1977). Nick Joaquin assumes the identity of his journalistic alter-ego in telling a quick succession of tales of, among many others, stolen kisses, inter-municipal liaisons, and love not at first sight but on second thought. There are only so many permutations of true love stories, whether ending in joy or tragedy, one can report before one shades into tedium, but Quijano de Manila seems equipped with a limitless writerly faculty that makes an otherwise dull and repetitive collection even more interesting than fiction.
“From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler” by E. L. Konigsburg (1967). The Newbery honors committee seldom, if at all, rewards a mediocre book, and one of the best of the best books to receive the award-giving body’s highest mark of recognition for a work of children’s literature is this novel about two siblings who run away from home to hide in a museum. But perhaps a greater honor is having joined J. D. Salinger’s “Franny and Zooey” in inspiring key scenes in Wes Anderson’s “The Royal Tenenbaums.” (Reviewed here.)
“03” by Jean-Christophe Valtat (2010). Devoid of paragraph breaks, “03” can surface and gasp for air only within the spaces, short as they are, intrinsic to periods and within the pauses, shorter still, afforded by commas, semicolons, and parenthetical marks. Jean-Christophe Valtat’s English language debut, smoothly translated from the French by Mitzi Angel, is the continuous monologue of a boy waiting at a school bus stop and admiring the “retarded” girl of his Joy Division-soundtracked dreams standing with her mother right across the asphalt-covered street. Its brevity and formal daring suggest a mode of unfoldment along the lines of Roth and Hrabal, but in its fixation with time, memory, and such precisely remembered acts as turning around inside acrylic curtains until one is wrapped tightly and out of breath, “03” is more Proustian than meets the eye. (Reviewed here.)
“Exercises in Style” by Raymond Queneau (1947). A man walks into a bus. Leave it to Raymond Queneau, a founding member of the Oulipo school of constrictive writing, to take care of the rest, by applying above-phrase-level elegant variations—no less than 99 figures of speech, narrative tropes, and shifts in perspective—to counterpoint the banality of an altercation in a communal vehicle followed by the provision of unsolicited sartorial advice in a train station. “Exercises in Style,” which has been translated and at points adapted from the original French to over two dozen languages, most famously in English by Barbara Wright, is a primer in the appreciation of the flexibility and malleability of words. (Reviewed here.)
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2011 in Books Not Published in 2011 (Part 1)
“Never Let Me Go” by Kazuo Ishiguro (2005). The first of quite a few books I read this year in tandem with watching their respective film adaptations, “Never Let Me Go” is a prime example of how and why science fiction and so-called literary fiction aren’t mutually exclusive. This novel by a perennial Booker favorite depicts a vaguely recognizable past retrofitted with advances in biogenetics as it deals with questions of identity and humanity and finding love in an emotionally cold climate.
“Winter’s Bone” by Daniel Woodrell (2006). Debra Granik may well have a nascent proclivity for film projects with the word “bone” in their titles, but it’s really no wonder why the “Down to the Bone” director dug up this “bone” from relative obscurity and made it into one of the best relatively obscure films of last year. This quiet story of a girl down on her luck in the wintry slopes of the Ozarks is an uncompromising look at the exigencies of finding (familial) love in a hopeless place.
“How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe” by Charles Yu (2010). With his nonexistent canine sidekick, his clinically depressed personal digital assistant, and his daddy issues constantly in tow, time machine repairman Charles Yu attempts to navigate the future meta-science-fictional Minor Universe 31 in this dizzyingly crafty novel written by present-day, happily-married-with-two-kids Charles Yu. Naturally, along the way the fictional Charles Yu stumbles upon a guide book titled “How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe.” Don’t panic: “How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe,” the novel, is genuinely respectful of the legacy of the great Douglas Adams, even as its protagonist seems intent on seeking an answer other than 42 to life, the universe, and everything.
“Room” by Emma Donoghue (2010). The narrator is a boy named Jack. He’s only five years old, but he already has an idea of negative integers. There is, however, a lot of things he doesn’t yet understand as clearly as other kids of his age already do. Jack has seen nothing of the world beyond Room, where he and his beloved Ma are kept captive by a heartless man they call Old Nick. Inspired by the famous Fritzl abduction case, “Room” reverberates with alternating currents of domestic peril and universal concern.
“True Grit” by Charles Portis (1968). Just as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” is the story of socialite Jay Gatsby eloquently told by his friend, Nick Carraway, “True Grit” is the story of marshal Rooster Cogburn told by the older and wiser voice of his teenage companion, Mattie Ross. True, but only partly; “True Grit” is as much Cogburn’s tale of heroism as it is Mattie’s bildungsroman. And like “The Great Gatsby,” “True Grit” is a Great American Novel. True, wholly.
Next: 2011 in Books Not Published in 2011 (Part 2)
Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown!
I’m broke and the apartment needs space and I need to have less load next time I move out (last time I did, I slipped on a curb and wounded my shin and lost a toenail while carrying Jonathan Safran Foer and company), so I’m selling some of my books here. (I shall update it sporadically with more photos of for-sale books on our wooden floor.) Help me (partially) live my dream of being a bookseller and fund the (immediate) rest of my life!
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