Since my life is fairly uneventful here in the Aerie of the Southwest Hills, and as a tool to document the books I've read, I've decided to start blogging on the books in my life. To let you know where I'm coming from, I've tried to come up with a personal Top Ten novels list:
1. The Western Lands--William S. Burroughs: This novel really represents the culmination of Burroughs' literary concepts of self-referential images and indeterminacy. A fantastic journey through epic landscapes fraught with Egyptian mysticism and scheming hustlers.
2. The Autumn of the Patriarch--Gabriel Garcia-Marquez: More than One Hundred Years of Solitude, Patriarch is perhaps Marquez' most radical literary effort. Marquez immediately abandons the conventions of sentence structure and period usage, which results in a brilliant whirlpool of words that immerses the reader in its exotic world.
3. The Rosy Crucifixion (Sexus, Plexus, Nexus)-- Henry Miller: This is really one gigantic novel in three volumes. Miller chronicles a long term stormy relationship across New York and Europe. His language is both forthright and fluent. Most people would ask why I don't have Tropic of Cancer in this slot...and it's really just a matter of personal preference. I happen to think Crucifixion is his masterpiece.
4. The Trial--Franz Kafka: Kafka truly ushered in the era of modern literature, and this novel, along with his numerous stories, journals and parables, was largely responsible. The grim struggle of the individual against the machinery of civilization. A work of bleak genius, and essential reading for all readers of literature.
5. The Subterraneans--Jack Kerouac: I'm a big fan of most of the Beat writers, and Jack's work follows a particular aesthetic guideline that influences some portions of my own writing. Again I've chosen a novel that is not the most famous one associated with the writer; I guess I'm just a man of rarefied tastes. This short novel, along with Dr. Sax and The Town & The City are probably his most romantic works. This one feels the most spontaneous and has the most similarities with the so-called "Road" novels.
6. Crime & Punishment--Fyodor Dostoevsky: Unlike most of the Russian writers (Tolstoy and Gorky for example), Dostoevsky is not a writer who dwells on minutiae. This hideously compelling tale of a man driven to murder has a very "modern" sensibility to it.
7. Gravity's Rainbow--Thomas Pynchon: Pynchon may be the finest living novelist, at least in the North American portion of our hemisphere. His wonderfully complex novel interweaves a myriad of characters and plotlines. This is one of the finest examples of the novel as high art.
8. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man--James Joyce: For a novel replete with deep symbolism it's hard to beat Portrait. The concept can be carried too far, however, as Joyce revealed in the nigh-impenetrable Ulysses. A good starting point for a young reader's first foray into literature.
9. Malone Dies--Samuel Beckett: Beckett's novel's are every bit as unrelenting as his plays, probably more so.
10. Hard-Boiled Wonderland at the End of the World--Haruki Murakami: Murakami is fairly well-known in the States for a Japanese writer, which is to say, hardly known at all. A strong case could be made for some of his other novels to share this spot, particularly The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle or Kafka on the Shore. His work is at once very contemporary and also strangely Zen and minimalist. I highly recommend him.
Honorable Mentions: Labyrinths--Jorge Luis Borges. Since it's more a series of loosely connected short stories than a novel, it doesn't qualify. As a reading experience, it ranks right at the top. Three Trapped Tigers--G. Cabrera Infante. Really involves one in the world of the Cubano. Man's Fate--Andre Malraux. Malraux has moments that are truly sublime. He also led a fascinating life. The Hobbit--J.R.R. Tolkien. The beginning of a long interest in the fantasy genre began here for me. Neuromancer--William Gibson. Stunning debut from one of the fathers of Cyberpunk. The Difference Engine is also fantastic. The works of Hunter S. Thompson, H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Jack Vance, Fritz Leiber, Edgar Allen Poe, Tanith Lee, Charles Bukowski, Arthur Rimbaud, Albert Camus.
Here's a small sampling of novels I've read over the past couple of years (the 2x or 3x parentheses indicate the number of times I've read it): Man's Hope--Andre Malraux, the entire catalogs of Haruki Murakami, Chuck Palahniuk, and Hunter S. Thompson, Memories of My Melancholy Whores--Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Old Gringo--Carlos Fuentes (2x), The Place of Dead Roads--William S. Burroughs (3x), V--Thomas Pynchon (2x), Gravity's Rainbow--Thomas Pynchon, The entire Kane series by Karl Edward Wagner (5+x), Dracula--Bram Stoker (2x), The Revenant--Michael Punke, Death on the Installment Plan and Journey to the End of the Night-- Celine, The Savage Detectives--Roberto Bolano, In the Hand of Dante--Nick Tosches, Wittgenstein's Mistress--David Markson, Blindness--Jose Saramago, The Road--Cormac McCarthy, Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook--Charles Bukowski, The Kafka Effekt--D. Harlan Wilson, Helix--Eric Brown, World War Z--Max Brooks, Up in Honey's Room and Freaky Deakey--Elmore Leonard, Already Dead--Denis Johnson, And the Hippos Were Boiled in their Tanks--William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac.
At the moment I'm reading Alexander: Child of a Dream by Valerio Massimo Manfredi. This is the first of a three-part series that was the basis for the recent film starring Colin Ferrell, Val Kilmer and Angelina Jolie. It's a rich historical novel that breathes real life into these figures of legend. It's OK, though not so compelling that I'm going to tackle the second volume right away.
Immediately before this I ripped through a sci-fi series by John Scalzi: Old Man's War, The Ghost Brigades, and The Last Colony. It's a pretty good space opera type series, nowhere near as complex as Herbert's Dune but an interesting universe nonetheless. I like the "desperate foothold" aspect of his creation, and the way his heroes achieve victory through smarts more than brute force. I'll be curious to see what this guy comes out with next.
Prior to the Scalzi books I read Nick Cave's second novel: The Death of Bunny Munro. Big fans (like myself) of his previous novel And the Ass Saw the Angel, his music or his lyric collections King Ink I & II will be surprised by the setting of the new book, but not by its mood or tone. A torturous trip down a very dark road with some very doomed characters.
Prior to Cave I read The Meaning of Night--Michael Cox. A novel of Victorian revenge that most readers, honestly, probably won't have the stamina for. I was a bit disappointed myself, not with the rendering of the book itself, which is fine, but the lack of forward-moving action, especially given its rather bloodthirsty opening and creepy cover.
I'll close with some observations on a couple of recent trends in lit, namely the recent spurt of Apocalypse and Zombie novels. At the insistence of numerous friends and coworkers I finally broke down and read Cormac McCarthy's The Road. I found it to be...merely adequate. I can't really see what all the fuss is about...though I can see how he could be viewed as a stylistic descendant of Hemingway, given his minimalist structures and simplicity of language. This minimalist school of thought is not one I adhere to; I'm much more fond of the wild flourishes of the Beats or the magical realists. Hence, perhaps, my dislike of the The Road. Far more compelling is Markson's Wittgenstein's Mistress, which is a more subtle, more penetrating, and more literary effort. Read that instead. Even Saramogo's Blindness is a more worthy effort than McCarthy's in my opinion.
Finally, while I haven't read The Zombie Survival Guide I did read and thoroughly enjoyed World War Z by the same author. A lot of fun and written in a fun documentary style, I recommend it unreservedly. I can't say I'm crazy about the idea of the "mash-up" idea of Pride & Prejudice & Zombies (haven't read it) but since I'm not a big fan of the original book, I can't see that the undead are going to improve it much.
