Friday Column: Books I'm Hoping to Get to in the Next 2 1/2 Months

It's hard for me to believe that we're almost at the end of 2007. There's so much I planned on getting to this year (see this column for an idea), so much that I won't end up reading. There are, of course, the nice surprises that help compensate for the books I've missed, but, somehow, I still feel let down.

Not only that, but soon 2008 will be rolling around and there will be a whole new slate of things I want to read. Sometimes when I think about this too hard it all feels useless, and I long for tunnel-vision; I want to lock myself away in a book with, say, 20 books and not divert my attention from them until I'm done. Keeping on-track seems at times to be all but impossible.

But anyway, I've got to try. There's roughly 2 1/2 months left to go in 2007, and I feel capable of getting to about 12 books in that time span. So, I'm going to lay out nine the books 12, both forthcoming in the fall and much, much older, that I'd like to read before the year's out. *

As usual, Dalkey Archive Press has a strong-looking lineup for the coming season, and one of the books that has most piqued me is Place Names by Jean Ricardou. The title reminds me of Proust, but the book's description doesn't: a comic novel centering around literary theory. An added bonus here is that it's translated by Jordan Stump, the same man to translate Jean-Philippe Toussaint's Television, one of my favorite books the come out of Dalkey in the past couple years.

A summer release that I'm fond of is Bartleby & Co. by Enrique Vila-Matas. That name might sound familiar because in a previous column I discussed his other recently translated novel (Montano's Malady, both by Jonathan Dunne for New Directions). Suffice to say, I was so impressed by Montano that I'm eager to get into Bartleby; I'm told has to do with "artists of refusal," or writers who chose not to write--people like Salinger, Musil, and Robert Walser (the latter two of which also played sizable roles in Montano).

And one more new release that I hope to read this year is Spaceman Blues by Brian Francis Slattery. I've been reading great things about this book--both in the blogs and in print periodicals--so my expectations are high.

Now on to the older books. Let's start with the really old. Tristram Shandy is one I'm quite eager to read. Of course, this book is well-known as metafiction about 200 years before the genre ostensibly started, but I'm also interested in seeing how Tristram manages to, in the words of Wayne C. Booth, "make everything that has touched him seem worth talking about." (In his writings on this book, Booth also references an interesting theory that Sterne did not intend to end his book when he did.)

A little less old but no less substantial is the second volume of Proust (Within a Budding Grove, according to Moncrieff, of In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, according to James Grieve). Readers who are interested in seeing my thoughts on the first volume can look here and here.

Five down and four to go. Not technically a new book, but a new edition of a book first published in 1992 is Sylvia by Leonard Michaels. I first became aware of Michaels when, in a recent Harper's essay, the fine literary critic Wyatt Mason said he was the contemporary American author he most admired. Here's a little more of Mason on Sylvia:

Although Sylvia is, by the standard of most novels, comparatively plotless and physically slight, the breadth of its capacity to present, with precision and care, the despair of two people makes it one of the more revealing reading experiences I know. In Michaels’s past memorials to couples furious with feeling, the air was “too thick to breathe, or to see through”; here, the air is no less toxic but is described with such unsentimental candor as to show how two people, briefly, often horrendously, shared their lives.

Another somewhat-recently published novel that has been reissued is Per Petterson's In the Wake. Petterson may be familiar to some readers for recently winning the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. He might also be familiar because he was one of the Reading the World authors back in June of this year and C. Max Magee of The Millions was kind enough to lend a few thoughts on this book. In part, here's what Max had to say:

The boundary between madness and loneliness is plumbed to great effect by Petterson in In the Wake, and is heightened by the Scandanavian backdrop of icy roads and unadorned apartment blocks. The book opens with Petteron's ruminating, somewhat pathetic male protagonist Arvid Jansen regaining lucidity leaning against the door of a bookstore. Arvid is bruised and battered though he knows not why. What follows is Arvid's slow steps toward awareness and a tentative investigation of memory.

And finally, a couple works of criticism. Earlier this year I enjoyed Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism, and right now I am finishing up Booth's The Rhetoric of Fiction. Once I'm done with that, I'd like to read The Well Wrought Urn by Cleanth Brooks. These eleven essays on ten English poems have been recommended to me as the single best manifestation of New Criticism known to man.

A critic whose name has been in everybody's mouth recently (including my own) is of course James Wood. Although thanks to Powell's Review-A-Day I've kept up with his recent writing for The New Republic, I'd like to go a little deeper into his backlist and see if I can better figure out where he's coming from. To that end, I've acquired a copy of The Irresponsible Self, a collection of Wood's essays, mostly written during the 1990s. An additional draw here is that even though Wood is oddly curmudgeonly and a little closed-minded when it comes to certain brands of fiction, he does tend to give thoughtful readings that are different from what I read anywhere else.

That's my nine, and there are three slots remaining. I'll of course have no problem filling those, but in writing this column I've began to wonder what's out there that I'm overlooking. In order to help me figure that out, I'd appreciate if you could drop a note in the comments box and let me know what you think I should read before 2008.

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* Unfortunately, but necessarily, I (as all bibliophiles should) reserve the right to toss out any of the books on this list at the moment something better catches my attention.

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Comments

[Dan Wickett]

The * is perfect!

[Drew]

Scott, great list. I hope you are able to complete the objective of making it through them all with as busy as you are.

I read IN THE WAKE about two months ago. The opening referenced by Max (and again by yourself) is perhaps the best opening to a work of fiction I've read so far this year. Petterson's ability to keep Arvid's face against the facade of the bookstore for as long as he does in the opening, in my estimation, is worthy of the highest praise.

I've recommended Sebastian Barry's A LONG, LONG WAY to many friends and another website or two, and as you are soliciting recommendations, I'd like to offer it here if you haven't read it. In this time of year where I am beginning to move past 80 works of fiction read this year so far, and with Bolano, Pynchon, Marias, Cormac McCarthy, Sebald, Atwood, DeLillo, Ondaatje, and Saramago contained therein, Barry's novel has remained with me the longest, and the most vividly.

Best of luck to you, and keep up the great work on this site!

[DerikB]

Ooo. I didn't know Dalkey had a Ricardou book coming out. I've been wanting to read him for a long time, and I suspect his works were beyond my French.

[Scott]

Well, first off, some of you might have realized that my math is a little suspect--2 1/2 months will only take us to the start of December :(. So, guess I have at least 4 more picks to make. Somehow, this is oddly reassuring . . .

Anyway, Drew: Thanks for recommending Barry. That's quite esteemed company you have placed him with (and Marias is another one I'd like to get to this year).

Derik, Hope you get to and enjoy the Ricardou. I just found out that Jordan Stump has recently translated another book--"The Waitress Was New," by Dominique Fabre and published by Archipelago.

[RfP]

I'm enjoying The Maias: Episodes from romantic life by José Maria Eça de Queirós (in translation). Alan Riding/NY Times recently described him as "Portugal’s Flaubert", and so far I agree.

[Matt]

I'm currently reading Palinuro de Mexico by Fernando Del Paso. Thus far, I would recommend it to anyone and everyone--it is something like placing Pantagruel in the world of The Recognitions.

[Matt]

But if you still intend on reading The Tunnel, you may need the rest of the time for that.