The year in books
Suggestions hold plenty of reasons for reading
One of the meanest jokes the brilliant comic Bill Hicks told during his too-short life was about the time he was sitting by himself at Waffle House in Nashville, Tenn., eating and reading a book.
He was approached by a coffee-slinging waitress who, noticing his endeavor, cheerfully asked “What you reading for?”
Now Hicks allowed that he had often been asked what he was reading, but that no one had actually ever asked him what he was “reading for.”
“Well … You stumped me,” Hicks replied. “Not what am I reading, but what am I reading for? I guess I read for a lot of reasons, but the main one is so I don’t end up working as a waitress at a Waffle House.”
Funny, in a punching-down sort of way, but not Hicks’ finest moment.
Eavesdropping on their conversation, a truck driver came to the waitress’ defense. “Well, look like we got ourselves a reader,” he said. Hicks: “You got me there.”
I imagine there are a lot more people who might ask “what you reading for?” around today than they were when Hicks died almost 30 years ago. I can empathize. I can even imagine that, maybe not too many years in the future, the act of reading might be obsoleted by technological advances. (Tolstoy thought the movies were the end of novels, and maybe he wasn’t entirely wrong — maybe they were the beginning of the end of novels.) More and more, the sort of deep reading required by so-called literary fiction has become an esoteric pursuit.
I know people who read for a living, but not for pleasure.
I understand this on one level — physically, one’s eyes and mind get tired. If you spend your days wrestling with the prose of others (or even your own prose) maybe the last thing you want to do at
night is read a novel. After all, we are living in some kind of decent age of television. Netflix and Amazon Prime and the Criterion Channel are always calling.
‘PRO’ VS. ‘AM’ READING
Yet I persist, though I recognize there is a difference between my professional reading and my amateur reading. My professional reading is that which I am required to do as part of my job. This consists of emails, letters, memos, newspaper stories, etc., but because I write this column, it also consists of novels and nonfiction and poetry, some of which, if left to my own whims, I would probably never read. I am in the ridiculous position of reading books simply to write about them.
And so, at least some of the books I write about get chosen because I believe they might be of interest to the readers of a general-interest newspaper serving the state of Arkansas. Some books I read purely because I think you might be interested.
Meanwhile, I’m also reading for my enjoyment. For instance, during the pandemic, I reread most of the novels written by Texans Larry McMurtry and Dan Jenkins. (I skipped “Lonesome Dove.”) Now I’m working my way through the works of “Dimestore Dostoevsky,” or Jim Thompson, a true poet of American Emptiness. (See his “The Nothing Man” from 1953, which might be the most insightful newspaper novel ever written, and his 1964 satire “Pop. 1280,” which I dismissed when I first read it 40 years ago because sometimes you need to have a little perspective to appreciate what’s on offer.)
At the same time, I’ve promised my editor a piece about the “Best Books of the Year.” I read some books in 2023 and found value in a lot of them, but by no means did I make a dent in the million or so books that were published in this country. (Neither did The New York Times or National Public Radio or any of the other journalistic institutions that publish lists of the year’s best; they probably just asked around the office for suggestions and looked back on the reviews they’d published.)
So, let’s be clear: The following are books I think you ought to think about reading if you are interested in rewarding these kinds of books. These are not the best books that exist in the world. These are suggestions for amateur reading. (And the etymology of “amateur” doesn’t suggest someone who performs at a less proficient level than a professional, only that the pursuit of the endeavor is driven by love rather than money.)
It’s in that spirit that we offer this list of notable books of 2023.
‘OZARK DOGS’
I don’t know that we need to say much about Eli Cranor’s “Ozark Dogs” (SoHo Crime), since most people who are interested in this column are likely to know all about it already. Besides (unless he’s taking a day off, which, knowing Eli, seems unlikely) his column is right here, on the front of the section. But his gritty, idea-driven and Arkansas-set crime fiction is the real deal and he’s a dangerously hard worker; his next book, “Broiler,” is coming out in July.
The same might be said for Monica Potts’ “The Forgotten Girls: A Memoir of Friendship and Lost Promise in Rural America” (Random House), a nonfiction account of her Arkansas upbringing and the friend who was almost lost to pathologies of poverty and abuse common to the rural South. Potts avoids the sentimentality that seems endemic to up-from-poverty memoirs; she neither romanticizes nor sensationalizes the hardness of living poor in Podunk, in a world devoid of role models where the only paths to the middle class for young women are teaching and nursing, where it’s easier to get meth than liquor.
One of my favorite Arkansas writers, the late Mike Trimble, got his due in the Ernie Dumas-edited “The Thane of Cawdor Comes to Bauxite and Other Whimsy and Wisdom from the Pen of Mike Trimble” (Butler Center Books). And the Jay Jennings-edited “Charles Portis: Collected Works” (Library of America) represents a significant contribution to American letters.
Kelly J. Ford’s novel “The Hunt” (Thomas & Mercer) is a crime novel set in Arkansas, in part based on Ford’s memories of growing up in and around Fort Smith. It’s especially notable for its protagonist, a damaged, strong-hearted young woman named Nell Holcomb (casting directors might start out thinking about a young Holly Hunter in the role). I’m generally not one for sequels, but Nell might be a character to follow.
I don’t think it’s particularly fair to call Richard Ford an Arkansas novelist just because he spent time here as a kid, but his Frank Bascombe novels have a deep hold on me and, despite its slightly corny title, “Be Mine” (Ecco) closes a loop and brings the cycle to a satisfying close (even if we might hold out hope the 80-year-old Ford has more to offer).
Lurching back to hardboiled old dudes: James Ellroy’s “The Enchanters” (Knopf) is a return to form that confirms his place as one of the great American writers. And as one of the creepiest.
I got to Barbara Kingsolver’s “Demon Copperhead” (Harper), a re-imagining of Dickens’ “David Copperfield” that shared the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction with Hernan Diaz’s “Trust.”
Jonathan Eig’s “King: A Life” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) is the first comprehensive biography of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in a couple of decades. “A New History of the American South” (University of North Carolina Press) is an impressive collection of scholarly writing edited by W. Fitzhugh Brundage, Laura F. Edwards and Jon F. Sensbach. It’s a handy reference I keep close at hand.
‘PURSUIT OF COLOR’
A book I never found a way to write about is Lauren MacDonald’s fascinating “In Pursuit of Color: From Fungi to Fossil Fuels: Uncovering the Origins of the World’s Most Famous Dyes” (Atelier Editions), an impressively researched work that explores not only the stories behind the dyes we use to color fabric but investigates our complex relationship to nature, while raising sometimes troubling questions about “progress” and its impact on nature and people.
David Grann’s “The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder” (Doubleday) is yet another nonfiction blockbuster that reads like a fantastic novel, and it’s easy to understand why Ann Napolitano’s “Hello Beautiful” (The Dial Press) became the sort of respectable bestseller that could end up both in Oprah’s Book Club and on a lot of end-ofthe-year best-book lists. The same might be said for James McBride’s “The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store” (Riverhead Books), a little slice about the universe contained in a Jewish/Black neighborhood in Pottsfield, Pa., called Chicken Hill.
While Lorrie Moore’s latest, “I Am Homeless if This Is Not My Home” (Knopf), might not be as accessible as some of the other big literary events of 2023, it is eerie, sad and intellectually challenging in a way that few novels are these days. It’s not a fast read, but a rich one. “Vengeance Is Mine” (Knopf), by Marie NDiaye, translated by Jordan Stump, is a critique of class struggle disguised as a taut psychological thriller set in the French city Bordeaux.
“How Not to Kill Yourself ” (Pantheon) by Canadian philosopher Clancy Martin is clearly not light beach reading, but it is one of the more remarkable and lucid explorations of the human instinct for self-annihilation I’ve encountered since Walker Percy’s thought experiments about people he termed “ex-suicides” 40 years ago. Percy believed all serious writers were ex-suicides who start “with [themselves] as nothing and makes something of the nothing with things at hand.” Martin has survived more than 10 suicide attempts, so is well suited to comment on the friction between wanting to live and wishing oneself gone. When Percy was dying of prostate cancer and undergoing debilitating treatments, he resolved to carry on with the chemo not for the small chance his own life might be saved but for the sake of the children he saw waiting in the cancer ward. Martin seems to be offering his story in a similar vein — he means to show the suicidal they are not alone.
‘BROOKLYN CRIME NOVEL’
Informed by a skeptical nostalgia, Jonathan Lethem’s “Brooklyn Crime Novel” (Ecco) might be better received as a book-length essay on the history of petty crime in the titular borough, but it was a pleasure to dip into. I didn’t think Colson Whitehead’s “Crook Manifesto” (Doubleday) was quite the equal of his “Harlem Shuffle,” but it is a meticulously detailed crime novel about ’70s New York that combines slapstick with heartbreak in ways that evoke — and I know how weird this sounds — Kurt Vonnegut.
I was moved and informed by Ed Madden’s “A Pooka in Arkansas” (The Word Works, $19), a collection of autobiographical poems, a rare journal of escape and rapprochement with one’s self and one’s history. The late Marc Spitzer’s volume of “investigative poetry” about the strange creatures that inhabit the Ozarks, “Cryptozarkia” (Cornerpost Press), was simply a lot of fun.
Foster Hirsch’s “Hollywood and the Movies of the Fifties” (Knopf) is valuable both as a reference and as a reminder of how extraordinary that decade, when the breakdown of the old studio system and the evolution of technology forced the reconsideration of modes of production and forced internecine battles between talent and management. “The American film industry in the dying days of the studio system adopted a go-for-broke, let’s-try-anything approach,” Hirsch persuasively argues, pointing out that the decade produced some of the strangest and darkest commercial films ever.
Another film book I held onto this year is Nate Patrin’s “The Needle and the Lens: Pop Goes to the Movies — from Rock ’n’ Roll to Synthwave” (University of Minnesota Press), a collection of essays about pop songs in the movies by a longtime pop music critic who is notable for both the liveliness of his writing and the rigor of his research.
Last month I recommended “Warren Zevon and Philosophy: Beyond Reptile Wisdom” (Open Universe) to partisans. It consists of 17 essays by academic Zevon fans from all over the world and is edited by John E. MacKinnon, who teaches philosophy at St. Mary’s University in Nova Scotia. MacKinnon also contributes a useful introductory essay, “Talkin’ about the Man,” that recounts his history with Zevon as it limns the artist’s career and the wonderful essay “Zevon and the Prigs,” in which he dives deep into Zevon’s concept of “Sentimental Hygiene,” which served as the title for both his sixth album (first “sober” album) and the lead-off track on that album.
‘MAPS AND LEGENDS’
John Hunter’s “Maps and Legends: The Story of R.E.M.” (Nottingham Press), is an impressive work of journalism that may be the best and most extensive biography of the band to date.
The graphic novel “I Must Be Dreaming” (Bloomsbury) by beloved New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast was a surprisingly weighty investigation into the jungle of the unconscious. While I’m an Amanda Gorman agnostic — she’s like Taylor Swift; I’m glad she exists but I’m not currently inclined to actively consume her work — I was impressed by her most recent children’s book “Something, Someday” (Viking), though it was mainly the illustrations by Caldecott Honor-winning artist Christian Robinson that charmed me.
I didn’t get around to this year’s John Grisham, though my wife Karen told me it held her until the last pages. Similarly I meant to get to Margaret Atwood’s latest collection of short stories. There are dozens of books I didn’t give a real chance and I apologize to them all.
As for what I’m reading for, the honest answer is for content, to have something to write about. Because that’s how we professional readers roll.
But I’m also doing it because I wouldn’t know how to live otherwise.
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