"HAMLET: Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing so o'erdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature: to show virtue her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure."
-- William Shakespeare, Hamlet: Act III, scene 2, 17-24
"Shakespeare said that art is a mirror held up to nature. And that's what it is. The nature is your nature, and all of these wonderful poetic images [of literature] are referring to something in you. When your mind is trapped by the image out there so that you never make the reference to yourself, you have misread the image."
-- Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth
"Books exist for their readers as mirrors and windows.... [Readers] need to see themselves reflected [in the books they read]. But books can also be windows. And so you can look through and see other worlds and see how they match up or don't match up to your own."
--Rudine Sims Bishop
________________
There is admittedly a lot of weight and ceremony in the sentiments expressed above regarding something as seemingly simple as the act of reading. And yet, as anyone who loves books and who loves to read could tell you, there is nothing "simple" about reading at all.
Below, then, is a list of some of what I spent my time reading this past calendar year. Some of these are old (one in particular is very old--so old, scholars aren't even particularly sure when it was "published"), while some are very new. Some are works of fiction, and some are works of nonfiction. And there is even some poetry thrown in for good measure. Regardless, in my opinion, these are the best pages I turned in 2019.
[Aside: And just to be clear, when I say "pages," I still mean that term in a literal sense. "Pages" in the physical, tangible meaning of the word--hands around binding, fingers touching paper. That sort of thing. God help me, I still can't fully get with the times, it seems, and relearn to "read" in the technologically new way. And I'm okay with that.]
I have obviously adopted the time-worn structure of a "year-end list" sort of thing, but it will also quickly be obvious that I couldn't and didn't want to limit my list to an equally time-worn and totally arbitrary structure of 10 items. Consider the following a bakers-dozen sort of approach, I guess (or something like that). Also, it should be mentioned, that in some instances the books may appear in a preferential order, and in some instances they may not. I find that kind of thing completely arbitrary, as well (maybe even more so than the insistent pressure to limit my choices to the blessed number of 10, again). At times, such a best-of list can be limiting and just more than a little "apples-and-orangey."
[Aside: I mean, after all, how am I supposed to say which I enjoyed more between Marcus Aurelius' ancient template of the philosophical/self-help genre, Meditations, and Chuck Wendig's uber-21st century take on the work of early-Stephen King/The Walking Dead/end-of-the-world sort of stuff, with his novel, Wanderers? Seriously? Is one "better" than the other? Is one "more important" than the other? Was my time more worthily spent turning the pages of one, as opposed to the other? I don't know. Nor do I really care. All I really know is that--as an example, anyway--these two completely disparate books kept my attention this past year...even long after I turned their last pages. I thought about the books. I deliberated over them. I wrestled with them. I remembered them. I saw them as both the proverbial mirrors and windows that all great writing is and has always been, ever since the art of writing was first created. And the same can be said (each with their own rationale and reasons) for all of the books below.]
If they are, indeed, windows, then what do the following books (new and old) look out upon, with this world of ours existing beyond their pages? What kind of world have we created for ourselves at the close of this second millennial decade? And what can we see of that world when we turn these pages?
And if, in fact, books are also mirrors, then what do my favored choices of reading material this past year say about me? When I hold these books up, I look at them, to be sure. And into them. But all the while I allow them to also look back at me and into me. What is it these books see? If they could talk to me (and make no mistake: books can talk, as anyone who's conversed with one can tell you...don't kid yourself), what is it that these books would say about me?
____________________
14.) Paul Simon: The Life -- by Robert Hilburn (2018)
Paul Simon is (inarguably, in my opinion) one of the handful of great American songwriters/singers/poets of the 20th century. And the fact that he allowed Robert Hilburn supposed unprecedented access to his notoriously secretive and carefully formulated life could be a sign that Simon is in that late phase of his life, as a creative genius, when he is willing to take a "big-picture" sort of look back at his life--warts and all. A couple of takeaways from this book, though: 1.) Though I admire both Paul Simon and Bob Dylan (two artists whose careers seem, for very good reasons, to be intertwined, in some ways), Simon has always been relegated to exist in Dylan's shadow, as it were, viewed as the lesser, more pop-oriented, artist of the two. Maybe that label is warranted, and maybe it's not. But one thing that comes through very clearly to me in Hilburn's book is that while both artists (Simon and Dylan, respectively) both enjoyed extraordinary early years--producing one classic song/poem after the next--followed by similarly uneven and somewhat unbalanced middle years, at times, and then late-career stages involving "classic" albums from both of them in their own right (Dylan with his 1997 release, Time Out of Mind, and Simon with his undisputed masterpiece, Graceland, in 1986), in my opinion--and in the picture that Hilburn paints of his subject's creative output from Graceland on--it is Simon who has produced seminal works of continued and progressive creativity and originality in the late-stage of his career, while Dylan (again, solely my opinion) has not produced anything since his late masterpiece in 1997 that could be seen to hold a candle to Simon's late output. And 2.) While, yes, this is Simon's take on his life, as filtered through Hilburn--and while, as always, this means that said things must be taken with the proverbial grain of salt--the picture one gets of Art Garfunkel (from Simon's admittedly biased viewpoint over the years) is one of bemused tolerance--the same way one might feel toward a beloved brother that simply grows weirder, and more distant, and more intolerable as the years go on. Garfunkel, though undeniably blessed with one of the greatest male voices in pop music history, comes across in this biography (fairly or unfairly) as a small-minded, childish, petty asshole. All told, the truth of the two's fractious relationship is probably somewhere in between.
13.) Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination -- by Brian Jay Jones (2019)
Over the past decade, or thereabouts, biographer, Brian Jay Jones, has quietly fashioned for himself a little niche in which he has chosen to explore the lives of American artists who exist in the public's collective consciousness as iconic outliers, almost--revolutionary geniuses in their own right who (each for their own reasons and creative impulses) found themselves on the fringes of American creative society, while all the while rewriting, remaking, reordering, and restructuring the prescribed model and mold of what could, possibly, be considered "great" popular art. His list of previous biographies include such titles as: Washington Irving: An American Original (2008); Jim Henson: The Biography (2013); and George Lucas: A Life (2016). Do you see a pattern here, or is it just me? And now, with this year's release of his biography on the inimitable Theodor Geisel (a.k.a. "Dr. Seuss"), Jones continues in the specific genre that he currently excels at. This is an interesting look at a writer we think we all know, simply because we grew up with him (and his characters, and his verses). But, as it turns out (of course), there is much more to the story than what we think we know...as is almost always the case. It's a fascinating book. (And, as someone who likes to write, himself, I am continually amazed at how Jones makes all of this biographical work appear so easy--the research, the interviews, the digging through old photos, and letters, and manuscripts, and memories, all to be followed, finally, with the outlining of the material, and the act of--at long last--writing it all down in some sensible form. It's not easy. And he's a modern master at it.)
12.) White -- by Bret Easton Ellis (2019)
Anyone who came of age in the 1980s (as I did) and who was an early bibliophile--bothering to pay attention to such things as books and writers and such (as I did)--certainly knew of Bret Easton Ellis, whether or not you had actually read any of his work. Ellis, the young American writer-phenom, exploded on the literary scene in 1985--at only 21 years old--with his legendary debut novel, Less Than Zero. He followed this with his sophomore effort two years later, The Rules of Attraction, and then followed that, in turn, with his third and most infamous novel--1991's grossly misread and misunderstood, American Psycho. (And about that third novel, let me briefly say only this: If it is possible to forget the movie adaptation and--yes, I'm not kidding--the stage-musical adaptation of Ellis' darkly hilarious and densely disturbing satire of New York City, and Wall Street, and Reagan-era America, and the empty, soulless, narcissistic, sociopathic state of the then-fashionable yuppie movement among the stereotypical "young American" scene, then what you have in this third novel from an undeniably huge talent is, in my opinion, one of the greatest sustained social satires--with its voice, its tone, its subject matter, its style--of late-20th century American literature. I'm serious; I think it's a brilliant novel. But anyway...) Be that as it may, though--in a water-under-the-bridge sort of way--that is all in the somewhat foggy past now, as if Ellis' meteoric appearance in the literary sky maybe never happened. Rather unsurprisingly, I guess, it would be his third novel which would unceremoniously bury him as a young writer-on-the-rise. And though Ellis has continued to write and to publish--fiction, nonfiction--while also these days hosting his own podcast, he has settled for a long time into his middle-age writerdom as a writer without a bestselling novel to his name. With this, then, his latest book--a collection of nonfiction pieces (part autobiography, part social-political commentary)--Ellis resurfaces as a writer and thinker who has lost none of his original fire and urge to--quite blatantly--piss people off. Though he is polarizing (and almost blissfully so) in his opinions and thoughts here, he is also--dare I say it--often right on the mark (maybe even more than my liberal-minded leanings would care to admit). This book will make you laugh. It will make you angry. It will make you roll your eyes, and sigh, and want to hurl the book across the room at times. It will make you nod your head, "yes," and/or shake your head, "no." And it will make you want to call up a friend or family member--regardless of political leanings--and read whole passages/pages aloud. It is a book that will make you think, in other words. And there's never been anything wrong with that. (And maybe today, particularly, more than ever.)
11.) The Closing of the American Mind -- by Allan Bloom (1987)
Almost a perfect companion-piece in many ways to Bret Easton Ellis' 2019 book, White (see above), Professor Allan Bloom's 1987 social-political treatise burst on the book world as a publishing anomaly. Here, after all, was an academic book, written by an aging academic (then a highly respected political-science professor at University of Chicago), about an academic topic--what was, at that time, seen as an encroaching "danger" of America's losing its footing in the world. The crisis at hand, according to Bloom in 1987, was not only an encroaching crisis of America's losing its place as a world leader in the realms of economics, and military might, and moral and ethical certitude (gravitational centers that have always held the United States together and kept it...well...united). What Bloom more importantly saw on the horizon back in '87 was a danger even more concerning: an intellectual crisis, the likes of which our society had never seen. The old ways were being called into question, with the advent of a social climate of a (then) new "political correctness"--all in thought, word, and deed. And while many of the changing social norms were timely and welcome, many of the old American standards--including standards of academic excellence--were already beginning to show signs of slipping and eroding. Bloom saw it then, and he called out the questions: What happens, after all, to a culture that loses its core values in the areas of intellectual curiosity, its desire for excellence, and its standards of achievement? What happens to a culture that becomes acclimated and comfortable with mediocrity? And the answers to his questions are...well, like it or not, they are commonplace these days. We're seeing his theories manifested today. To his credit, he recognized the signs back in 1987, and we're realizing the results played out in American society, 2019.
[Aside: A bit of transparency regarding this book: I was in college when it was first published. I was doing my undergraduate work at the time, studying English Education at my alma mater, Fort Hays State University, in Hays, Kansas. I fashioned myself a young academic, to be sure; I considered myself fairly well-read, fairly insightful, and fairly intelligent. I remember reading about Bloom's book and hearing about its (then) controversial ideas. And I bought the book, way back when, putting it on my undergraduate-student bookshelf, and telling myself I would get around to reading it soon. I did try picking the book up, as I recall, and thumbing through it, diving into it headfirst...only to make it through its first 40 pages, or so (what amounted to the book's Introduction, in other words), before admitting dumbfounded defeat and setting the book aside. And there it sat for 32 years, until this past summer, 2019. I'm 52 years old now; I was a young man, then, when the book first came out and when I first tried to scale its heights. I was ripe with dreams of being an English teacher someday, the likes of Mr. Keating at Helton Academy, setting the world (or my future classroom, at least) on fire with the passion of great literature and great writing and great learning. I was an illusioned, inexperienced young kid when I first picked up Professor Bloom's book. There was no way I could fully grasp the depth of his references and insights. I wasn't that well read, after all. And more importantly, I hadn't lived an adult life yet. I hadn't lived a life as an educator--more to the point--toiling in the world of education. And I hadn't yet experienced all the latent joys and frustrations that such a life entails. There was no way I could completely comprehend and connect with the book as a young man. But fast-forward 32 years into the present moment, when I've lived an adult life--as a divorced husband, and as a father, and as a teacher--and I've seen firsthand what Bloom was talking about, way back then. I see, now, what he was getting at. And I see that in many alarming and prophetic ways he was right. But because he wrote his book when American society--world society--was just on the cusp of a transcendent technological explosion (it's almost hard today to remember such a time before personal computers and before smartphones, but that world did, in fact, exist), Bloom's book can admittedly come across as somewhat quaintly dated, in a way. For example, while he personally saw distraction in the current popular media of the day--the ever-present television, movies, popular music, etc.--it's interesting to wonder what he would make of today's computerized world, and of the level of addictive distraction that comes from everyone carrying with them, 24/7, a pocket-sized computer. Though he doesn't address these sort of specifics (since they didn't exist yet, even then, in 1987), it isn't hard to tell what Professor Bloom would have said about it all, not to mention its deleterious effects on such things as education, personal drive and ambition, intellectualism, and the like. Even though he didn't have all the terminology at his disposal and he didn't know all the words for today's distracted computerized culture, Bloom saw its shadow looming, and he warned us of the storm-front fast approaching. All told, this is still a seminal and important book. And I'm glad I finally got around to reading it...32 years later.]
10.) Anything You Can Imagine: Peter Jackson and the Making of Middle Earth -- by Ian Nathan (2018)
This is just a very entertaining and enlightening look at not only Professor J.R.R. Tolkien's timelessly inventive and dense world of Middle-Earth (as he originally created it on the page in the early 20th century) but also at the breathlessly thrilling and "envelope-pushing" cinematic world of Middle-Earth (as recreated in the early part of our 21st century) by New Zealand filmmaker, Peter Jackson, and his re-telling of Tolkien's classic myths, The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. I am an unapologetic fan of Tolkien's original books; I have been a fan ever since I first ventured into their pages way back in the day, as a young teenager. I am also an unapologetic fan of Jackson's film adaptations--because of and despite their (at times) slavish devotion to the Professor's original text and also, ironically, because of and despite their (at times) hit-and-miss efforts at rewriting, restructuring, and retelling the Professor's original text. Nathan's book entertainingly explores all of this. Its pages flew by.
9.) Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know -- by Malcolm Gladwell (2019)
What to say about writer/thinker/cultural observer/sociologist/master connector-of-dots, Malcolm Gladwell? This is his sixth book, following on the heels of the bestselling predecessors, The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, What the Dog Saw, and David and Goliath. Along with those accomplishments, Gladwell is also the creator and host of the podcast, Revisionist History. To try to pinpoint exactly what it is that Gladwell does that makes him unique as a writer is hard to say, in a way. He is part psychologist, part historian, part detective, part code-breaker, part puzzle-maker, part noticer of cultural patterns. He structures his books in the same way, pretty much every time, beginning with a specific anecdote, or story, or illustration, and then moving outward (and inward) from that opening to look at other anecdotes, stories, and illustrations, all the while picking apart at threads that lead from one revealed point to the next, connecting dots, forming an outline of a picture in the reader's mind, a noticeable pattern, an idea, an hypothesis, a theory, a thesis... In this way, Gladwell makes use of one of the oldest structures of classical argument: inductive reasoning. And he generally does it very well. Above all, he has the skills of a natural, masterful storyteller. He knows where he wants you to go, and if you are willing (as a reader) to sit back and trust him as your guide, the journey is always worth the time.
8.) Wanderers: A Novel -- by Chuck Wendig
How does a young writer go about respectfully paying homage to an older, established, famous author that he grew up with, and read voraciously all throughout youth and early-adulthood, and cherished, and admired, and loved? In the case of Chuck Wendig, he grows up to become an established, well-respected author himself, and he sets about the business of creating a long door-stop of a novel (800 pgs.), styled after Stephen King's early-career post-apocalyptic masterpiece, The Stand.
[Aside: The original 1978 version of The Stand is what I'm referring to in this review, not the unedited, uncontrolled, unfettered mess of King's 1990 "director's-cut" version of his classic novel. I don't have time or space here to go into all that I think is wrong with King's bloated revisioning of his famous early novel (it was only his fourth book, back in 1978, following an amazing run that any popular 20th century author would be proud of: Carrie, Salem's Lot, and The Shining), but let me just say that in the case of his 1,000+ pg. exercise in ego-vomit, this is an excellent example of the old "less-is-more" adage (if, in fact, an original version of the novel, weighing in at 850 pgs., itself, can be said to be "less"). In this case, however, it can.]
Wanderers is just an awful lot of fun. While it is consciously a send-up to the kind of story that King used to do so well as a young writer--a burgeoning artist on fire with creativity, and imagination, and professional drive--Wendig is respectful enough to tip his hat in the direction of the famed author who inspired his story. But make no mistake: This book is entirely its own thing, with a big cast of characters, a sprawling story set across a ruined American landscape, a handful of plucky survivors, heroes that you love, villains that you hate, and a churning energy constantly pushing and pulling you through its 800 pages of narrative drive. Simply put: Wanderers is a novel that finds a way to "out-Stephen King" even Stephen King, today.
7.) Kindness and Wonder: Why Mr. Rogers Matters Now More Than Ever -- by Gavin Edwards (2019)
To anyone who pays attention to the current situation(s) in our country--not to mention our world--it would seem easy, certainly, to slip into a paralysis of sadness, hopelessness, and despair. But to do that would then miss the point--the larger point of our life on this earth, perhaps--that while there will always be moments and people that push us to the edge of our deepest fear and anxiety, there are also particular moments and people that come along exactly at the right time and place for our lives. And they are a light in the darkness. They make us feel good. They remind us that there is, in fact, such a thing as goodness in the world. They give us encouragement to be brave, to be true to ourselves, to like ourselves, and to keep going. It seems like a banal, cliche' platitude, maybe, to say something so oft-repeated and so obvious, but Fred Rogers was a miracle of a human being. What you saw was exactly what you got. There was no act, no air of falseness, no pretending about him--other than his beloved "Land of Make-Believe" that he popularized on his long-running children's show on PBS, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. Currently, there seems to be a renewed interest in the man, who left us in 2004 after a bout with cancer. It is not too hard to understand why we're experiencing this reawakening and reappraisal of this gentle, kind man in the colorful zip-up cardigans and the sneakers that he slipped into so casually at the beginning of every single show. If we took his goodness for granted while he was alive (in fact, using him as the butt of so many unnecessary jokes), then we certainly miss him now, it would seem. I think we realize we could all use a bit of Fred Rogers these days, and Gavin Edwards' book plays upon that realization. It is a short, quick read (at just a mere 250 pgs.), but that seems in keeping with Rogers' style, itself. Within its short structure, the book is divided into two fairly equal parts: the first half of the book is a quick biography of Fred Rogers--the man, the husband, the father, the friend, the TV personality; the second half of the book is given over to Edwards' summation of Rogers' teachings--a 10-point takeaway, if you will, divided by chapters with headings such as:
1.) Be Deep and Simple
2.) Be Kind to Strangers
3.) Make a Joyful Noise
4.) Tell the Truth
5.) Connect With Other People Every Way You Can
6.) Love Your Neighbors
7.) Find the Light in the Darkness
8.) Always See the Very Best in Other People
9.) Accept the Changing Seasons
10.) Share What You've Learned (All Your Life)
If you're the kind of person who can read this book and not feel a lump forming in the back of your throat from time to time, then obviously this book isn't for you. But for me--and for the rest of us, maybe--that lump in the back of the throat, the tears that collect in the corners of the eyes while reading the book, speak to a feeling of regret and sadness, certainly, that Fred Rogers is no longer with us. But more than that, I think, the emotion that we feel speaks to the miracle that there ever was such a person as Fred Rogers in our midst. And the wonder at what it is we ever did to deserve him.
6.) American Pastoral -- by Philip Roth (1997)
Philip Roth was a master of late-20th century/early-21st century American literature. I had never read this book before, until going through my personal collection and picking it up this past year. There are a handful of American writers who could be said to reside at the proverbial "top of the mountain" of contemporary American fiction. Of course everyone's list would be different, but among the names in that rarefied air would have to be included (in my opinion) the writer, Philip Roth. What he accomplished during his career--including, of course, his early explosive talent but also, almost more impressively, his late-career run of unprecedented masterpieces (within which American Pastoral would neatly fit)--was almost indisputably masterful, as he set about chronicling the 20th century Jewish-American experience, novel after novel after novel... In this, his 1997 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Roth depicts a disrupted American family, and a disjointed sense of the American Dream, and a disturbing view of cultural-political terrorism (four years before the tragic events of 9/11 would lay low any sense of American propriety, and American security, and...well, American "pastoral"...) This is a remarkable novel.
5.) Barefoot in Babylon: The Creation of the Woodstock Music Festival, 1969 -- by Bob Spitz (1979)
Simply put, this was the most fun and most "un-put-downable" book I read this year. It was in keeping with an interesting cultural (or counter-cultural?) trend of 2019, which recognized the 50th-anniversary celebration of events that happened during the "flower power" Summer of Love, c.a. 1969. (For it seems the Boomer generation--growing up and coming of age in the late-1960s--had more than its share of legitimately momentous occasions upon which to draw memories...or at least the occasional acid-flashback--the nightmares of Vietnam and the anti-war movement, notwithstanding). Whatever the case, Spitz--who also authored the wonderful 2005, The Beatles: The Biography (still, probably, the best book I've read on the band, to date)--is a nonfiction writer who understands how to slowly, carefully assemble all the puzzle pieces of his subject spread out on the table before him. He methodically lays out all the details of the story he's trying to tell--no matter how small or mundane the puzzle piece--until each element of the story locks into place, one by one, and you begin to see the finished whole. Basically...let's be honest...the 1969 Woodstock Music Festival was a disastrous mess, from start to finish. But it was also an amazing cultural triumph--against all practical and logical odds. And if that statement doesn't make sense--and it admittedly does not--then Bob Spitz's history of this important musical and sociological event is for you, because he explains it, in the smallest of details, and he makes you care, and he makes you cringe, and he makes you cry at a lost idealism that we'll never see again in our jaded, uber-materialistic, uber-ironic, uber-cool capitalistic world (all of which, ironically, such an event as the original Woodstock helped to unintentionally usher in. "And so it goes," to quote the late, great Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.)
4.) Dad's Maybe Book -- by Tim O'Brien (2019)
There's no point in me talking around the issue, here: Tim O'Brien is one of my favorite writers. Hands down. He will be remembered forever for some of the greatest novels written by an American author at the close of the 20th century. Going through the list of some of his titles is like a roll call of great contemporary American literature. From his auspicious early days, winning the National Book Award for his novel, Going After Cacciato (1978) to his universally praised masterpiece, The Things They Carried (1990), to later novels, such as, In the Lake of the Woods (1994), and July, July (2002), no American fiction writer has done more to so honestly and beautifully chronicle the angst, the pain, the fear, and the weight carried by soldiers both in wartime and in times of peace, back at home (in his case, the American war in Vietnam). He is, in my opinion, the best at covering this subject. He's done it, and he's done it masterfully. There will be (and already are) young writers coming along the literary scene, writing about contemporary soldiers at war who fittingly fall into a comparison with O'Brien, and who critics are quick to say write "like Tim O'Brien." But there will never be another Tim O'Brien. And he wouldn't have to write another word, as far as I'm concerned; his reputation is cemented in the canon of great writing. It seemed, too, as if he, himself, agreed with this assessment, since for the past 17 years (since the 2002 release of July, July, in fact), there has not been a new book with his name on it. The word was out that he had unofficially "retired" from writing. And the more that time moved along, with no new books being produced from his desk, it appeared that he was, actually, done with it all...until this year, 2019, and his surprise latest release, Dad's Maybe Book. By some estimations, the book may be considered a bit of a mess, to be honest. But if so, it is a beautiful and brilliant mess. O'Brien is kind of all over the place in this work of nonfiction--his first book-form autobiographical style of writing since his 1973 debut, the memoir, If I Die in a Combat Zone. That first book of nonfiction was written by a 27 year-old young man who had served a tour of duty in Vietnam and then, while pursuing studies at Harvard, decided to give everything up and dedicate his full attention to writing. Which he did, but at the expense of everything else, sadly. And what that meant for O'Brien, anyway, was a notable and prize-winning career as a great American author, but it also meant a failed marriage and childlessness. Until, that is, a second marriage came along late in his life, and with it a chance, at long last, to be a dad--something that had always eluded him. With the birth of his sons, O'Brien made the decision to walk away from what he saw as the selfish lifestyle of a professional writer and to, instead, be present in the lives of his children. Which he did, and which explains the 17 years of silence from him in the publishing world. And yet...he didn't entirely stop writing. And this book is the proof. While his boys were growing up, O'Brien would make the time to jot down ideas, thoughts, memories, and observations. These jottings, as it turns out, were about life in general; and his life, specifically; and about his time in Vietnam; and about his thoughts on the current state of the world and of America; and about his strained and painful relationship with his own father, who was distant and alcoholic and abusive. O'Brien never wanted to be that kind of father. He did not want his sons to grow up feeling for their dad the same confused spectrum of emotions that he grew up feeling for his own dad. And so he wrote this "maybe" book ("maybe it's a book, and maybe it isn't," he would tell his sons when they would invariably ask him what he was writing). The conceit of his new book is simple, and it's messy, and it's profound: He is a 73 year-old father of two young sons, and he doesn't have to be told the preposterousness of that scenario. He realizes, sadly, that he will not be around to share in his sons' lives as they grow into young men, and husbands, and fathers. He realizes that his time with them is limited. It is not anyone's fault (and yet you can't help but sense, throughout, O'Brien's unrelenting guilt at the decisions he made as a young, hungry writer, desperate to make a name for himself, at the expense of all else). Still, he has the time with them now, and so he has used it well. And this book is his opportunity to impart whatever he can in the way of fatherly insight and advice and wisdom. It's a profoundly moving book. And, as such, I realize it may be O'Brien's last published words. I cherish it all the more for that.
If you're anything like me, you've probably heard the name, Marcus Aurelius, somewhere before. Perhaps it was in high school, with some overzealous senior-year English teacher. Or maybe it was in college, sitting through some General Ed. Intro. to Logic class. Or it could be that the only thing you really know of the name, Marcus Aurelius, is from Richard Harris' abbreviated performance of the man in Ridley Scott's 2000 sandals-and-swords epic, Gladiator. Be that as it may, I wasn't fully prepared for the man--and the mind--that I met while first coming into contact this year with his famous book, Meditations. As Rome's Emperor for roughly 20 years, serving between the years 161-180, he was the last ruler of Rome to fulfill what the Greek philosopher, Plato, envisioned as his perfect ideal of a leader--the famed "Philosopher King." During Marcus Aurelius' rule, the Roman Empire would enjoy its last years of prosperity and peace, during the famous phase known as the Pax Romana (or "Roman Peace"). Marcus Aurelius was level-headed. And insightful. And foresightful. And just. And mighty. And intelligent. And while he sat at the head of Rome, he was also a voracious student of history, and of orators, and thinkers, and logicians. Names like Epictetus, Seneca, et al., were common as his counsel, and as such Marcus Aurelius was a devout student--and eventual practitioner and writer--of the philosophy of Stoicism. He never intended to write a book, certainly. He simply saw merit in recording (if for no other reader than himself) a journal of the wanderings of his mind--his thoughts, his insights into the qualities that make a good leader, that make a good citizen, that make a good person, leading (hopefully) to a meaningful, practical, well-balanced, and good life. Meditations is one of the first (and best) books of its kind--although, again, its author accordingly never intended to actually write a "book." He was just thinking to himself on paper in the evenings--scratching by candlelight--after a tiring day of leading the greatest empire the world had ever seen. As such, though, his Meditations is part memoir, part philosophical treatise, part self-help guide. And all in all, it's a one-of a-kind reading experience--a good tonic for the tumultuous times we live in, to be sure...albeit thousands of years after the time when the book was originally written.
2.) All of Us: The Collected Poems -- by Raymond Carver (2000)
I feel a little disclaimer is in order for this book, as well, seeing as how--technically--I had, at one time or another, read most of the poems in this collection. Most...but not all. In his relatively short life (he died at age 50 from lung cancer, after a lifetime of battling alcohol abuse), Raymond Carver etched a permanent place in America's post-modern literary canon with his extraordinary output of minimalist short stories. He was a master. I first became familiar with Carver's short fiction while in college, but it was at this time, also, while nosing around in a used bookstore, that I stumbled upon his first published book of poems, 1984's Where Water Comes Together With Other Water. I was nonplussed: I didn't even know Carver wrote poetry, and I was a great admirer of his short stories, so I plunked down the meager change for the book, and I read it in one night. I couldn't believe how great his poems were: short, succinct, zen-like, stripped to the bone, emotion laid absolutely bare, like his famous stories, but even more minimalist (if that could be believed). Here was modern writing at its barest essence. And it was stunningly, achingly beautiful. And sad. And funny. But sad... Then, two years later, in 1986, I picked up his second published collection of poems, Ultramarine, followed by his third, A New Path to the Waterfall, which appeared posthumously, a year after his death, in 1989. The wonderful symmetry to all of this--after being a fan of Carver's poetry for decades--is that I stumbled upon this book, All of Us: The Collected Poems, in a local Half-Price Books one afternoon. Of course, I had to have it. Included in this collection is an earlier, lesser-known collection of poems, as well as some unpublished work released after his death, along with the three collections that I already possessed and had fallen in love with years ago. As a short story writer and as a poet, there is no one quite like Raymond Carver:
LATE FRAGMENT
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
1.) The Overstory: A Novel -- by Richard Powers
How to best explain this book? I'm not sure... I could say, to begin with, that Richard Powers has been called "the most intelligent American novelist at work today," and that might begin to scratch the surface a bit of what you have here. I could also say that the novel is constructed like a patchwork-quilt, in a way, made up of various chapters (which, seen independently, could also be viewed as separate, stand-alone short stories), all of which begin to reverberate and echo within one another as characters and events slowly begin to cross and intercut with one another, and an overarching plot begins to emerge. I could also say that it is an ecological "warning cry," if you will, a Transcendentalist plea on behalf of the trees. The Overstory is a celebration of life, and of nature, and of our world, and of the notion of time, and of endurance, and of love. I could say that there are passages and sentences and entire sections of this book that deserve to be read slowly, savored, and re-read, and read out loud, hearing the music of Richard Powers' talent as a wordsmith. It is a beautiful book. A prose poem, in places. A celebration of nature and of human nature. It's a book that lingers long in the mind well after you finish the last sentence and close its cover. It's a moving novel. It's beautiful. It's powerful. It's a book that gives me hope--as a reader--in the future of great writing. (Great writing is still with us, as it turns out; it's not going anywhere.) I could say all of these things, regarding Powers' Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, and I would be right. Or I could simply say this: The Overstory is the best book I read over these past 12 months.
