Counterbalance

LAist Editors Pick their Favorite Books of the Year

Another list I can get behind because, well, I created it. Or, prompted it. The Editors at LAist share their favorite books they read this year.

Mine is in the bunch and will be no surprise: Tom McCarthy's Remainder.

But: there were several lurking just behind and I want to make mention of the books that really got to me this year (even if they weren't published this year) for a range of reasons. In short, every one of these books has inspired me to continue writing fiction. I can't think of a better reason to admire them than that:

• The Interloper by Antoine Wilson
• Jamestown by Matthew Sharpe
• Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
• The Unforeseen by Christian Oster
• All Over by Roy Kesey
• Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name by Vendela Vida
• Distant Star by Roberto Bolaño
• Varieties of Disturbance by Lydia Davis

A List I Can Get Behind

The book critics at LA Weekly have their end-of-year book list out and I like it. The theme is "undernourished" books and for once, out of all the list madness and all my irritations with lists that look the same (Chabon, Diaz, Johnson) and do little to embrace smaller presses, I'm pleased.

Who's on their list?

• The Descendants by Kaui Hart Hemmings
• The Long Embrace by Judith Freeman
• Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You by Peter Cameron
• Ten Days in the Hills by Jane Smiley
• Out Stealing Horses by Per Patterson
• The Exception by Christian Jungersen
• Radiant Days by Michael Fitzgerald
• Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
• Creem: America's Only Rock 'n' Roll Magazine by Robert Matheu and Brian J. Bowe Collins
• What We Say Goes by Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian
• Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics by Rebecca Solnit
• Listen Again: A Momentary History of Pop Music by Eric Weisbard
• My Lobotomy by Howard Dully and Charles Fleming

Bravo LA Weekly, b-r-a-v-o. A list that isn't too safe, that doesn't pander, that doesn't try to run with the big boys and water down all reading in the process.

Go check it out - the comments from the contributors are just as good as the list itself.

A Few Questions Over Coffee

Questions are asked of some interesting folks:

• Dwight Garner has a quick chat with one of my favorite translators, Natasha Wimmer (she recently translated The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño)
• Powell's has some quick questions for Taylor Clark about Starbucked
• Dave Hickey is interviewed by Sheila Heti for The Believer
• Mara Naselli interviews Tara McKelvey about Monstering at Identity Theory
• LA Weekly interviews Daniel Day-Lewis and he talks of film like I think of writers who write a book, then go on tour, then write another book:

“Something that has been suggested on my behalf is that I live an almost bipolar existence, with the public life of filmmaking on one side and a sort of reclusive, almost misanthropic life on the other.” (This has been suggested most often in the British press, which has “grossly misrepresented my life,” he says.) “But it never appears to me that there’s any chasm, any rift, between those two worlds. My life to me contains both the professional and the personal very easily. But because you tend to be written about when you’re for whatever reason in the public eye, then they depict you as having left and returned.

“But it’s not a return to me. I never went away. I never left myself. I simply need the time I spend not working in films, the time away, to do the work that I love to do in the way that I love to do it.”

Lit Bits & A Bit About the Lemon

I'm fresh off an eleven-day run in which little else was done except for work, work and more work. I've not answered emails. I've not finished designs. I've got to take a break before I dive back into it all. This will not be, sadly, a relaxing holiday time. It will be what I like to call "catch-up time" - the time where everyone is "out"/"away" and I can get all the work done in peace, in quiet, with bursts of reading & writing in between.

Plus, there are stories due. Many, many stories due. More on this later. If you've not heard back from me, do not fear. You will. Once I get some proper rest and remember what my name is.

Until then:

• I'm not sure how I missed this, but John Fox has an excellent post on the literary journals that offend the most. As I get ready to jump back into the world of submissions, I will heed every word.
• John also points to an excellent resource for all submitting writers (one that I keep finding and forgetting about): Duotrope. Take heed and stay away from those deemed The Slothful.
• Carole Muske-Dukes was on Bookworm today and I missed it entirely due to deadlines. Aren't podcasts great?
• Mark Sarvas shares his carry-on reading for the travel weeks ahead and I'm pleased to learn I'm not the only one who hasn't read Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates. It is high time I do and it's on my list of holiday reading as well.
• Oxford University Press asked Lauren Cerand about favorite recent reads and the results are delicious: neither I've heard of, both are equally intriguing. One is even a work in translation!
• Post Road Magazine's got Elissa Schappell waxing poetic on Dawn Powell. I discovered Dawn Powell a long time ago - strangely as a recommendation from Gore Vidal in some book or other. While I'm not a sucker for Vidal's work, I certainly am for Powell's. I've been meaning to write a post on her work for...years now...and who better to beat me to it?
• I'm thrilled to learn that Three Percent is making a concerted effort to track literature in translation. A much-needed endeavor.
• I'm not liking Meyer any more than I did yesterday, even though I'm nearly finished. It pains me to want to like a book so badly and to have it stop short of nearly every expectation I had for it. I've almost stopped completely twice - tempted to close the book, file it back in the yellow section of the shelf and move on to the big pile of books I simply can't wait to read. I still may do it. I might. But it's Dixon. I couldn't do that to Dixon. Or could I?

Dixon's Meyer Akin to Meyer Lemon

I want to love Meyer. I do. But the ruminations of a writer - even a good writer - don't always work well on the page. The self-conscious mind-wandering and "is this a good idea?" and "no, scratch that, it's been done before" concerns feel used up and so five years ago. It has been done before. More successfully, I'd argue. Which I hate because I love Dixon.

There are some beautiful moments with Meyer's mother. I'm only halfway in, so perhaps there will be more.  I hope.

But for now, it all feels very Charlie Kaufman in Adaptation. Which I liked, but that was five years ago.

Whither the Reluctant?

It's hardly news now, but when I first got the feed in my reader late last night, I was too stunned to post about it. (Secretly hoping he'd change his mind by the time I woke up.)

Alas, Edward Champion is done with blogging. He is going to focus on his novel and writing reviews and articles full-time. This is the very thing I struggled with awhile back, feeling sure that my unpaid efforts would be better spent writing fiction instead of blog posts. During that struggle,  Ed was very gracious with his encouragement that I should continue on. That I should post every day and write, write, write.

I will continue to do just that. For now.

I respect the prodigous blogging efforts that Ed has bestowed upon us all. I respect the difficutly that no doubt came with such a decision. And I simply cannot wait to see what he does next. I'm quite sure it will be damn good and well worth reading.

Whither the List That Matters?

I've never been a fan of year-end lists. I've made this known.  It has come time to say it out loud: I'm uber-tired of it this year.

Why? Short of The Millions and EWN and a tiny handful of blogs and pubs, who have the sense to run "lists" of books that authors (the keyword in all of this as I make my case: authors) liked this year (and which therefore results in interesting lists, lists that consist of something other than the top three or four or seven books that are now so ubiquitous I feel I should refuse to read them on spec or at least out of some unresolved issue I have with authority and being told what to do and what to read), it seems that everyone is cheating off of everyone else. There's only one best-books-of-the-year crib sheet and everyone's got it. Everyone's looking over the same damn shoulder when the teacher's got her back turned.

With the many weekend articles decrying book reviewing (again!) and the lack of reader interest in those book reviews (again!) and how dismal a year it was for books (again!), I feel like screaming: is it any wonder when you all pick the same books and tell the would-be readers you seem so intent on keeping to read them, read them, read them, or else!?!?!!?

Where are the works in translation? Where are the books by small presses? Where are the books by first time authors? Where are the short story collections? You cannot whine about the state of affairs if you're all asleep at the helm. You simply cannot.

Paris, je t'aime

Just saw the lovely collection of five-minute short films, Paris, je t'aime. Not only do the twenty different films offer up so many different views of Paris, they made me both wistful about visiting again (ah, Montmartre! we'll be back in our little flat soon, you wait and see!) and happy that I've visited at all.

What struck me most, however, about this collection of films was how akin they are to short stories. Starting halfway through the action, right in the middle of a moment. Ending in the middle of another. No clear resolution per se...not on either side of the story. But an engrossing glimpse into a moment in time. The way characters are introduced, the way so much about them is communicated in such a compressed amount of time - brilliant stuff and so closely tied to the structure of my favorite short stories.

I'm not a professor. I'm not a creative writing instructor. But if I could somehow teach a class on how these films represent the best of short story writing, I would. Really. Excellent, excellent stuff and I highly recommend it.

If the lure of short films as short stories doesn't offer quite the pull I'd hoped, I point you to the list of directors who participated in this collection:

Olivier Assayas		(segment "Quartier des Enfants Rouges")
Frédéric Auburtin		(segment "Quartier Latin") (transitions)
Emmanuel Benbihy		(transitions)
Gurinder Chadha		(segment "Quais de Seine")
Sylvain Chomet		(segment "Tour Eiffel")
Ethan Coen		(segment "Tuileries")
Joel Coen		(segment "Tuileries")
Isabel Coixet		(segment "Bastille")
Wes Craven		(segment "Père-Lachaise")
Alfonso Cuarón		(segment "Parc Monceau")
Gérard Depardieu		(segment "Quartier Latin")
Christopher Doyle		(segment "Porte de Choisy")
Richard LaGravenese		(segment "Pigalle")
Vincenzo Natali		(segment "Quartier de la Madeleine")
Alexander Payne		(segment "14th arrondissement")
Bruno Podalydès		(segment "Montmartre")
Walter Salles		(segment "Loin du 16ème")
Oliver Schmitz		(segment "Place des Fêtes")
Nobuhiro Suwa		(segment "Place des Victoires")
Daniela Thomas		(segment "Loin du 16ème")
Tom Tykwer		(segment "Faubourg Saint-Denis")
Gus Van Sant		(segment "Le Marais")

The list of collaborating writers and actors is equally impressive.

The Big Book Prizes of the Year

The Scotsman takes an interesting look at the year that was - month by month - in books. It makes for a fascinating chronological view of the big things that happened this year, including the many European festivals that I so nearly attended but then missed. 

After scanning their list, there were a few "ack!" moments that reminded me of a book I was so hot to read in January but have now failed to get my hands on. Two mentioned regrets that I hope to get to next year:

• The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters by G W Dalhquist
• Darkmans by Nicola Barker

What interested me most about this look back though, is seeing all the "big book prizes" for the year listed in one place. Such a simple idea. Such an obvious one. But I've never seen it done before.  Toss in the National Book Award winner Denis Johnson for Tree of Smoke and it serves as the perfect look at the schizo year we just completed:

• The Man Booker: The Gathering by Anne Enright*
• The International Man Booker: body of work by Chinua Achebe
• The Orange Prize: Half of a Yellow Sun Chimamanda Ngozie Adochie*
• The Costa Award: The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney*
• The Guardian First  Book Award: The Beautiful Tings That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu*
• The Saltire Award: Day by AL Kennedy*
• The John Llewellyn Rhys Prize: The Carhullan Army by Sarah Hall*
• The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: The Road by Cormac McCarthy

I've starred the books I've not yet read. A shame that I've read so much this year and yet, so little of all this.  My complete list of books I wish I'd read in 2007 is forthcoming.

Lit Bits & A Bit About Coetzee

• I knew I wasn't the only one who needed a creative outlet other than writing! (via Maud)
• Great LA Weekly interview with Matt Taibbi on "how the U.S. is like Ike Turner"
• Lovely little surprise to find that the NYT's The Lede blog has quoted yours truly re: w00t madness.
• J.P. O'Rourke reviews Starbucked - a book I just finished and will be writing an LAist piece about in the coming weeks. I, for one, found the whole thing frightening. And: I'll never shop at a Starbucks again. Even if it's the only coffee in the airport. But: the book debunks some widely held myths about how bad Starbucks really is (contrary to popular belief, Starbucks has helped more mom and pops than it has closed).  As you might imagine, it also uncovers some previously undiscovered calculations that made my stomach turn. Good fun.
• As has been noted elsewhere, Salon's list of favorite books in 2007 is about as safe as a list can get. I remember speaking to Josh Getlin at the LA Times about this earlier in the year - that the same books are reviewed in every paper on any given Sunday. Such is also true of the lists. How can the smaller presses and lesser known novelists ever break through the cold, unified front-of-a-wall that is these lists? They all look the same. They all list the same books. Ugh. Although, props to Ferris because we dig him, unified front of a list or not.
• What is really interesting, is Salon's coffee-table book list, which I'll examine in more detail shortly. Might compare it to Vogue's extravagance, as I see some of the same titles listed.
• Rachel Donadio at the NYT has an interesting profile of J. M. Coetzee and makes me ever-so-impatient to get my hands on Diary of a Bad Year which many of you have told me I must sit down with at once. Must get it first. A snippet from Donadio's piece:

In his 1991 essay “What Is a Classic?” Coetzee writes about T. S. Eliot’s decision to leave America, become a British citizen and convert to Catholicism. That process, Coetzee writes, is “one of the most spectacular that occur to me of a writer attempting to make a new identity, claiming that identity not on the basis of immigration, settlement, residence, domestication, acculturation ... but by defining nationality to suit himself and then using all of his accumulated cultural power to impose that definition on educated opinion.”

Perhaps Coetzee, for all his reticence, has similarly grand ambitions.