Inspired by a list that I saw about the best books of the past ten years, I've made up a list of my own. The other list (while actually being pretty damn good) took a number of opinions into account, my list is more comprehensive. I think it's fair to call it the definitive reading list of the past ten years.
Why? Because I'm twenty nine-years old. Ergo; while reading over the past ten years I've been young. If our culture has taught me anything it's that young people know everything and are hip and worth being listened to.
And for anyone who doesn't think I'm serious (and is particularly snobby, as most people don't care to read much beyond New Moon) go ahead and take a look at the judges panel for the National Book Award. Go ahead, it's only a few clicks away, and our generation loves to click away. We get bored when we have to read more than two paragraphs. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google.
I've put in a nice link for you, (though not properly linked as I'm too lazy. You'd have to copy the link into your tool bar, which is highly unlikely). Here's another link in case you got bored between links: http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2009/12/14/091214fi_fiction_wallace
I didn't even link you to the National Book Award sight because I could tell you were already glazing over. It's not wise to spend your whole time while blogging worrying about whether your reader is interested. Something about it smacks of a certain amount of self-awareness that makes us both uncomfortable. I can hear you saying, just show me the damn list. Of course, pretending like you're talking to me right now might be a sign that I'm slipping even further into the illusion that this is anything more than a one-sided conversation.
http://www.blackwellreference.com/public/tocnode?id=g9780631185376_chunk_g978063118537620_ss1-6
The point is, that minor awards like the NBA (that's short for the National Book Award for those of you who aren't in the know. Think of it as the best picture nominee for books). Anyhow, this panel includes a certain eminent critic of NPR fame. I spent a brief time chatting with this eminent critic a year ago in the hallway of a local high school. Most of life is not real, but my conversation with the eminent critic was real.
As it turns out the eminent critic is a grade A prick when it comes to literature. The critic believes that anything that doesn't adhered to the dictums laid down by John Gardener are not worth the page they are printed on. I'm pretty sure that the EC would call books like Cloud Atlas and Pastoralia terrible and unreadable.
http://www.themillions.com/2009/09/the-best-fiction-of-the-millennium-so-far-an-introduction.html
The EC has white hair, a stately look about him. He knew a really famous author or two early in life. One can only assume that this sort of encounter with genius stains a man in the long run. Makes him pine after that which he never will be, and shun everything that isn't like the thin he will never become. The famous writer was Bernard Malamud. I never met Bernard Malamud but he actually sounds like a pretty nice guy.
Anyhow, at a certain point in life some people get really didactic about what comprises "good fiction." And they run about for the rest of their life blaring the trumpet of what "good fiction" should look like. These people tend to be wholly unaware of the history of the novel, which is pretty much a history of change. And I'm fairly certain that these people lament the waning influence of literature in the era of the computer without giving any thought to writing something different that really engages the culture rather than affronts it.
M: My favorite author is David Foster Wallace.
EC: Unreadable.
DFW:
Look man, we’d probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is? In dark times, the definition of good art would seem to be art that locates and applies CPR to those elements of what’s human and magical that still live and glow despite the times’ darkness. Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it’d find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it. You can defend "Psycho" as being a sort of performative digest of late-eighties social problems, but it’s no more than that
M: I recently read Varieties of Disturbance by Lydia Davis.
EC: Oh, another unreadable author.
http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2007.html (The special fun of clicking on this link is seeing Lydia Davis' book Varieties of Disturbance as an NBA (which I just realized some of you will be reading as National Basketball Association) nominee in 2007).
These people show a certain amount of inflexibility in reading fiction that seems borderline totalitarian. These are the sorts of people who insist that Obama is a raving socialist hell bent on taking away our freedoms or a lefty who claims Bush was out to conquer the world from some misguided Christian agenda. Instead of regarding both as flawed individuals with whom you may disagree, even vehemently, without resorting to an opinion that is so incredibly close-minded that it does no one any good. It the sort of thing that just makes you want to shake a person and say, "Think." And by think I mean the rather insane idea of putting yourself in someone else's shoes for a moment, which the best of fiction sometimes can do.
In case you're bored here's a thing that's cute.
That's called pandering.
Fiction can come in a variety of good forms. Just because Hemingway and Carver were good doesn't make Joyce and Woolf crap. In fact, it's the sort of thing that we've decided we like as a society. Diversity that is, of voices and opinions. And we're still trying to sort out how best to carry out this rather sad project of humankind, but it seems to me that we've gotten some things right in the last one hundred years, women's rights. And we still need to get a whole host of other things right and keep the good things that we've fought so hard for.
We don't tend to like voices that are different than ours. Some people hate Fox News and others hate the "leftist" media. But I think, at our best, we'd probably say that the fact that both kinds of voices are allowed to exist is probably a good thing. And some days it might make our head hurt, but if the alternative is the murdering socialism of Stalin or right wings that turn into dictatorships than perhaps we're onto something. Even if we occasionally wish extreme ill on the 50 percent of the population that does not see things our way. And on good days I'd even like to believe that that is the way that most of us feel.
http://www.slate.com/id/2105672/ (This link is great! Don't miss it). Read this blog in two days, or three days. Or in thirty second snippets. But don't miss clicking on this. Think!
I think that it's sort of weird that the EC (who kind of hates books, which seems like an odd job for a book reviewer, and judge of the National Book Award)even judges books at all.
But I'll argue that while he can have his NBA award, I can make a small blog post that thirty or so people are going to read, or skim. And I'm going to argue that it's a good thing that both the EC and I have a venue. The Internet is neither good nor bad. It's thing. And when we use it to express our connection with one another, or even our well-reasoned differences. It's good.
It doesn't mean that I think he's right. In fact, I think his idea of fiction is horribly narrow and rigid. But, hey, if everyone thought exactly as I do the world would be a pretty boring place now wouldn't it? Their would be no room for works of genius that shock the culture because the culture would be so damn homogeneous.
I've forgotten to put links or make short paragraphs for an ungodly amount of time. I'm going to go back and add some more to make this whole rant more palatable. Maybe I'll put in a music video and some nice photos as well. At this point in time the blog only has two minor links and you have to paste them into your tool bar to change them. Okay, I'm off to add some more. Some that might even lead you to the NBA awards, which is going to wind up making the whole post look contradictory. In fact, this side rant used to be connected with the last paragraph into some ungodly construction. (Note the lazy use of ungodly multiple times in this paragraph).
I've changed that for your viewing pleasure. I'd like to think that the following list is the sort of thing that you'd find enjoyable. A look at some wonderful books by a person who is just like you. Alternatively, lazy (just look at the punctuation in this post) and inspired, intelligent and dramatically stupid, but still willing to remain open-minded about this spinning ball of blue and the hairy creatures who currently sit at its pinnacle evolutionarily speaking. Anyhow, here's a list of books for anyone who ever wonders "I wonder what books Andrew likes the best?" To all two of you. The list:
Dedicated to the EC (Who, this author will concede might be a stand up fellow to get a drink with at the bar. But that doesn't make his opinions about literature any less insufferably banal).
1. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
2. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
3. Pastoralia by George Saunders
4. The Known World by Edward P. Jones
5. Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
6. Atonement by Ian McEwan
7. Like You’d Understand Anyway by Jim Shepard
8. Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson
9. No One Belongs here More Than You by Miranda July
10. Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski
11. Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
12. Magic For Beginner’s by Kelly Link
13. Sam the Cat by Matthew Klamm
14. Then We Came to An End Joshua Ferris
15. Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas
16. Home by Marilynne Robinson
17. Dangerous Laughter by Stephen Millhauser
18. The Sea by John Banville
19. The boat by Nam Le
20. The Dead Fish Museum Charles D. Ambrosio
21. Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen
22. EveryMan by Philip Roth
23. Mortals by Norman Rush
24. Hateship, Friendship, Loveship, Courtship by Alice Munro
25. Twilight of the Superheroes by Deborah Eisenberg
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