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Published on 5/7/08
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THE BEST
The Savage Detectives, by Roberto Bolaño, translated by Natasha Wimmer (FSG). The late Chilean expatriate’s masterwork is a complex celebration of two outcast poets who start out in mid-’70s Mexico City and spend the next 20 years wandering the world, pursuing artistic ideals and growing increasingly frayed by time. Bolaño cranks out hard-bitten insight and hyperkinetic prose, but what makes the book resonate is the way it slowly suggests Latin America’s history of violence. Full review
Varieties of Disturbance, by Lydia Davis (FSG). No short-story writer is better at capturing awkward situations or the zigzagging logic of minds behaving badly. Her sentences are meticulous and philosophical, even when the narrators worry about killing a caterpillar or what to cook for dinner. She’s funny, too: It’s as if her characters are taking detailed notes as they idle past the pileups of their own neuroses.
Two Lives, by Janet Malcolm (Yale). The formidable journalist’s study of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas asks how two Jewish lesbians survived the Nazi occupation of France, and then examines their hard-to-pin-down attitudes about sexual identity, religion and the war. Combining interviews, textual research and psychological moxie, the book is an excellent example of literary reportage by an author who knows that the pursuit of truth requires a writer to be constantly suspicious of it. Full review
The Last Novel, by David Markson (Shoemaker & Hoard). What, a novel composed of postcard-like notes about Katherine Mansfield, Sophocles, Mark Twain, George Eliot, and so on? It sounds a little like a thrift shop overflowing with intellectual gewgaws. To read it, though, is to become totally enraptured by a master stylist whose narrator wrangles with mortality and artistic greatness, all while keeping a smirk on his face.
Shortcomings, by Adrian Tomine (Drawn & Quarterly). A pitch-perfect distillation of killjoy behavior, this graphic novel takes on romantic betrayal and racial politics with disarming clarity. Antihero Ben Tanaka almost always says the wrong thing, but you root for him anyway in this cruel and wise book.
The Rest Is Noise, by Alex Ross (FSG). Sure, this critic’s insights are sending aficionados back to their Richard Strauss and Benjamin Britten CDs. But Ross’s study of modern music is also candy for people who don’t know how to get to Carnegie Hall. And why not: With its musical prose and profiles of artists in distress, it makes Michael Azerrad’s portraits of indie rockers seem downright placid.
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Díaz (Riverhead). The Drown author mixes sci-fi, a tumultuous segment of Dominican history and the story of a chubby nerd’s quest for love as if they belong in the same novel. And while you’re reading this comic, high-energy book, there’s no question that they do.
Notes from the Air, by John Ashbery (Ecco). A selection of work from the man who should be our poet laureate. Anyone attempting to squeeze a narrative out of his verse will come up baffled, but his delivery is so loose-limbed, his language so imaginative, that most will just relax and enjoy this American original.
Brother, I’m Dying, by Edwidge Danticat (Knopf). The Haitian-American author revisits the lives and deaths of two father figures with a magic-producing reverence. Her dad emigrated to the U.S. in 1971; his brother stayed in Port-au-Prince until political unrest forced him to flee in 2004—only to die while being detained by immigration officials. Danticat’s prose never loses its crystal-clear elegance, letting the horrific story of a callous bureaucracy speak for itself.
Partial List of People to Bleach, by Gary Lutz (Future Tense). This low-budget chapbook is one of the most distinct story collections in years. In skewed yet artful syntax, Lutz dwells on sad-sacky guys with curdled emotions and unpredictable sexual appetites. His droll, abstract world is realism for people who love language but celebrate its mutations. Full review
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