The shortlisted novels for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2011 have been announced, and I’m glad to report that I haven’t read any of them. This means my reading list for the rest of September and the first half of next month—the winning book will be announced on October 18—is already taken care of. 

Submarine (Richard Ayoade, 2010)

This Halloween I’m coming as Oliver Tate—except that I’m the last person you’ll see in a Halloween party. Or any costume party. Or any party, for that matter. I’m at times insouciant, but often I’m just unsociable. If I were in some sort of acquaintance party (Oh. Hi. I came here for the raffle.) and were asked to think of an adjective that begins with the first letter of my name to describe myself, I’d answer “awkward,” plain and simple—except that someone else before me would’ve already answered that and I’d be left thinking of something else and maybe I should just answer “adjectival” since I’m quite fond of adjectives anyway.

Like Oliver, I also had a Jordana Bevan. My very own. Once. But unlike Oliver and Jordana, we had pet names, held hands, and had emotions (gay). Perhaps that’s why it didn’t work out between us. Like Oliver, I made a mistake, what do you want me to say? Nothing, it turned out, because she had had the last word.

The last time I saw her was when I gave her a copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, my favorite book then and now—along with several others, including, of course, The Catcher in the Rye. On their first movie date Oliver gives Jordana, along with King Lear (“probably Shakespeare’s most mature work”—Oliver) and Thus Spoke Zarathustra (by “probably one of the most influential philosophers in modern time”—Oliver), a copy of The Catcher in the Rye (“a great example of a modern American novel”—Oliver and me).

Like a certain someone you might know, Oliver reads a lot. Besides the Bard, Nietzsche, and Salinger, he reads Gunter Grass and Jung. He also reads Judith R. Brown’s I Only Want What’s Best for You: A Parent’s Guide to Raising Emotionally Healthy Children in the hope of helping Jordana deal with her mother’s illness and Making Relationship Work in the hope of fixing a certain something of his that didn’t.

I’m thinking Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy (Full title: The Anatomy of Melancholy, What it is: With all the Kinds, Causes, Symptomes, Prognostickes, and Several Cures of it. In Three Maine Partitions with their several Sections, Members, and Subsections. Philosophically, Medicinally, Historically, Opened and Cut Up) would also be right up Oliver’s alley—and mine. It seems we’re both wrapped up in that sinking feeling, of diving into the deep end.