Reading Challenge 2013 Part 4: 20-11

With ever-growing excitement, I'm plunging into my top 20, starting with...

20) A Death in the Family – James Agee

So, if you read these posts in order, you will step from a book (Death of the Heart) that could well have cracked my top 20 to a book (This one, read the title) that could well have been left out of my top 20, and with very good reason.

I think it unlikely there’s a book out there that deals more comprehensively with the shock, grief and pragmatism following a sudden and unexpected death, and the completeness of its narrative is both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness.

It’s a little like Derek Cianfrance’s film from this year, The Place Beyond the Pines, in a sense, because this book has two sections that in any other context could be amazing, and one that just... isn't. In this case it’s the middle section that cools one’s enthusiasm (read: cooled my enthusiasm) towards it.

At the same time, I feel like the middle section was Agee’s most important section, as it deals both painfully and painstakingly with every detail of the minutes and hours following the discovery and announcement of the death. It could, in fact, be the most heart-wrenching experience if the death of a loved one is currently on your mind, or at least fresh, but coming at it detached it plods along interminably.

More than that, I feel Agee really could have explored the philosophy of death a bit more, particularly as it relates to the two children in the book, and I could have read the sections written from their point of view for three, four hundred more pages; they were captivating. As it happened, there was just a bit too much emphasis on the middle section, and less extrapolation on the first and last sections, which were by far the strongest. If the middle section had even been a little truncated – just a bit – this could have been much higher in my list.

19) The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – John LeCarré

So we move from a moving meditation on life and death to a bit of good old-fashioned genre fiction fun.

I was lucky enough (or manipulative enough, I can’t remember which) to be able to read this as part of our book group meetings, which were the only excuse I gave myself this year not to be reading something for my challenge. This was a little bit of guilty double-dipping, reading something for my book group that doubled as ticking one off my challenge.

The truth is I thought this was actually less of a good choice for a book group book, because it lacked ambiguity and actually sort of shoved the plot and its editorial point of view down your throat a bit, so there wasn’t all that much to discuss, but at the same time as a book itself I really have to admit to enjoying it, a lot.

This is regarded by many, including I would assume the aggregators of TIME’s list, as the greatest espionage book of the twentieth century, possibly ever, and I would be inclined to agree. Yes, it’s a page turner; one that does so by keeping you invested and enthralled in the intrigue and suspense that is being unravelled.

But more than just being a suspenseful thriller, this book has a deeply imbued sense of moral ambivalence towards the whole espionage world in general; one to which our current world leaders might benefit from paying heed. There are no effective victories in this game, just points that serve to prolong the game itself.

This book is a remarkably cynical one, but as with A Passage to India it’s cynical about a subject that I welcome wholeheartedly.

18) Portnoy’s Complaint – Phillip Roth

Now we move from a page-turning piece of genre fiction to about as genre-free, and structure-free, as you can get.

Those who have been paying attention (hi, Mother) will remember that Phillip Roth’s other entry on TIME’s list, American Pastoral, cracked my top 20 last year as well – possibly even my top 10? Obviously I haven’t been paying attention – so he makes it again with this stream-of-consciousness-cum-bildungsroman-cum-confession of sorts?

It actually surprised me how high this was on the list, because its freewheeling style lets you cruise along – if you want - without really having to absorb all of the messages along the way. But apparently something about it did hit home for me, because here it is.

I think what I enjoyed most was just the blunt, warts-and-all confessional  style of the narrative, taking us deep into the heart and mind of a troubled Jewish man as he confronts all of the demons of his past and present. Dark as it all sounds, Roth imbues it with a profound sense of humour, and an even more profound sense of humanity.

It’s most definitely one that could do with a revisit at some point, as I know I didn't get the full experience from one run through, but there was still plenty to enjoy.

17) Call it Sleep – Henry Roth

And from one Roth we move onto the other Roth, and a far more conventional narrative that still managed to hit home.

Henry Roth’s novel is the story of a young Jewish boy’s experiences growing up around the lower east side of New York, presumably stuffing his face with Katz’s Delicatessen pastrami-on-rye sandwiches, although Roth doesn't include a great deal of that as it’s obviously just presumed that everyone on the lower east side spends most of their days doing that.

The most effective part of this book is how effectively Roth evokes the experience of childhood. Not only the tentative feeling-out to make friends and fit in, but the uncertainty and abject terror that can associate itself with unknown corners of familiar places and the impending wrath of authority figures.

In Call it Sleep the most terrifying, as well as the most intriguing, character, is that of the boy’s father Albert, whose quick temper and disdain for his son’s weaknesses is obviously a beard for problems more troubling and personal to him, and the build-up of the story is effective in drawing out his most sympathetic side.

It’s a fairly conventional read, but one that’s always presenting something new to ponder.

16) Red Harvest – Dashiell Hammett

Another one that surprised me a little how high it was, this. Given that The Big Sleep suffered so languidly down in the bottom half of this list, it seems a little unusual that the only other hard-boiled fiction on TIME’s list would crack the top twenty. But, again, here it is.

Aside from the fact that The Big Sleep was harmed, as I said, by my prior familiarity with the plot – a problem that Red Harvest didn't encounter – what sets this above its noir cousin is how daringly, and even absurdly, it stretches the generic conventions to their absolute breaking point.

Basically if The Big Sleep is ‘hard-boiled’ I’d describe Red Harvest as metamorphic. We have here at the centre a detective who is, as conventions dictate, a tough, street-smart and slightly grizzled veteran, but one who finds himself so wrapped up in the toxic atmosphere of the city of Personville (or ‘Poisonville’ as it becomes known) that he turns from anti-hero into active villain of his own plot.

Hammett’s prose, I have to admit, is not as strong as Chandler’s, but the story he weaves is both captivating and hugely entertaining. The suspense that is such a staple of the genre begins to turn about halfway through from ‘will the bad guys be brought to justice’ more into a sense of how many ‘good guys’ will be caught up in the conflagration of sinister corruption that pervades everything.

The moral ambivalence almost becomes a moral apathy, and it’s really rather a lot of fun.

15) Naked Lunch – William S Burroughs

Before I start, I'd like to state that I can think of at least two things wrong with this title. 

As for the book, well I always knew after having read it that it would be up towards the top of my list, but at the same time I knew I would have a hard time justifying its spot. So here goes nothing.

Burroughs’ book has all the elements I generally hate, in anything. There’s no narrative structure or permanence to it in terms of character, setting, or plot. It’s free-wheeling, aimless, and has nothing whatsoever to latch onto and remember after you've finished.

But for all that, it’s a deeply absorbing read. Basically nothing more than a typed up manifesto of a sequence of hallucinogenic nightmare trips, it becomes a sort of dystopian vision that is completely uncaged. I couldn’t tell you the name of one character, one place, mentioned in the book, and would be hard-pressed even to describe in detail one of the scenes or visions that Burroughs relates. But that’s not really important.

People who read this blog (hi, mother) probably know that I’m not hugely into mind-altering substances of any description beyond the occasional over-indulgence in alcohol, so while Naked Lunch may not be analogous to everybody’s trips, they certainly painted a vivid and colourful picture to my sober mind.

Incidentally, this is also one on the scoreboard of ‘I saw the film adaptation first’, but David Cronenberg’s vision of this book and the book itself bear about as much similarity between them as would a Rob Zombie-directed adaptation of a Beatrix Potter book. Although for different reasons: you just can’t tie this book down to any singular vision. 

14) The Assistant – Bernard Malamud

Now this book would, if I were giving out such a thing, have to take the title for the biggest leap up the rankings compared to how I would have ordered this list with all books sight unseen. As with most books, I went in knowing nothing about it, but having never heard of the book or its author (apparently Malamud also wrote the baseball book The Natural – TIL), and frankly with a title like The Assistant, I really didn’t expect much at all.

What I got, though, was a simply told tale (like Call it Sleep in that sense) that became both a melancholic exploration into the notions of family, hard work and devotion and a very interesting meditation on transgression, guilt and redemption.

There were a couple of times in this story that I really wondered where it was heading, because it had a number of different thematic threads that it followed, but the overall conclusion to them and the story was such that left me satisfied, but also really quite curious.

I’ve spoken a couple of times in these write-ups about final lines. An American Tragedy dropped to dead-last place by virtue of its shithouse last couple of lines, while Under the Volcano was lifted a lot higher on the strength of its brilliant last line. The Assistant’s last line is actually one of the  more noteworthy ones because it struck me as quite odd. It seemed quite a turn from where I thought it was going, but at the same time didn’t trouble me in that it didn’t actually fit in. It simply gave me something else to ponder in a book that had already kept me thinking and guessing. So it was a very pleasant surprise overall.

13) Atonement – Ian McEwan

Chalk up another one on the ‘I saw the film adaptation first’ scoreboard with this one. While I can definitively claim that seeing the film adaptation first is not the way to go around Atonement, I can thankfully say that it certainly doesn’t suffer from doing it the wrong way around. The only reason I say that is that I think the book would be far more evocative and galling if you didn’t know what was coming, while I don’t think the film will ever be as evocative and galling as the book could be. If that makes sense.

This was my second McEwan novel, the first being the charmingly upbeat The Comfort of Strangers (this phrase is at least 99% sarcastic, incidentally), and it was fairly clear to me quite early on in this book that Ian McEwan hates everything and everyone, possibly even more so than his friend Martin Amis.

Atonement is, to me at least, a howl of frustration at the notion of entitlement. Although there is far more to the novel than just that, what came through most clearly to me was McEwan declaring an unspoken class warfare on British society’s upper echelons, not just for their more obvious sense of entitlement but also the way they calculate and scheme with things they do to better the lot of those less fortunate. (You understand I’m not saying this is what they do, but how I see McEwan seeing them)

While knowing the plot in advance did spoil some of the more visceral reactions I may have had, it certainly didn't dampen the cynicism inherent in the work, or the sense of gloomy hollowness one can’t help but feel. In fact in some senses it kind of sharpened that, because rather than the ending being one cutting blow (I remember describing reading The Comfort of Strangers as ‘like a sucker-punch to the soul'), the whole book was a bitter foreshadowing of the inevitable disappointment of life.

As a sidenote, the experience of reading Atonement also alleviates one of the movie’s greatest weaknesses by not having Keira Knightley in it.

12) At Swim-Two-Birds – Flann O’Brien

Now this was probably the biggest surprise of all. Not just the fact that I enjoyed it as much as I did, but also when sorting that it came out just outside the top ten. Even twenty or so pages into reading it I wouldn't have predicted that.

Especially - and I have to emphasise this - given my utter disdain for Ulysses, this shouldn't really be where it is, because aside from being considerably shorter and considerably less interested in itself, it’s very much in the same mode of writing.

This one, though, has a couple of elements that I feel elevate the material from the pretentious drudgery of Joyce’s work. Firstly there is the flitting between the ‘real world’ and the fictional world being spun by our narrator, which draws a more obvious line between narrative events and authorial exploration, which in Ulysses feels very forced and self-conscious to me, particularly towards the end.

Then there’s also the fantastical meta-ness to this, where in the fictional world, the characters created to become villains or antagonists break free from their moulds and hold the author accountable for the short lots in life he granted them.

I think the absurdism, and the silly humour of this, is of the same ilk that other people respond so well to in Joyce, but for whatever reason it worked far better for me in this book, and despite my initial misgivings it was one of the most enjoyable reading experiences I had this year.

11) Ragtime – E L Doctorow

So landing just outside my top ten is this somewhat strange work from E L Doctorow, and I think it’s a fitting place for it, too.

Kind of an ensemble story, it tells the disparate but intermingling tales of about six or seven characters, largely in and around New York state at the turn of the twentieth century, and including in its mix such real life figures as Harry Houdini, Henry Ford and J P Morgan. The overall effect of the multi-thread narrative is to evoke a time and place, rather than necessarily concern itself with just the people.

Therein also lies its biggest weakness, however: namely that there is sort of a big story at the centre of this book, but it feels almost like an afterthought that floats to the surface in the course of Doctorow telling us all about these various characters going about their daily activities.

That’s not to say the story isn’t well set up by the multiple threads, and isn’t in itself an affecting and thought-provoking narrative, but there is an authorial detachment inherent in having such a bold narrative device levering the story into place, and I found that detachment quite distracting in this instance. That’s why this otherwise captivating and heartfelt novel finds itself just outside my top ten.

Basically what I’m saying is that if all of the different characters had had as evocative experiences as that of the principal actor, Coalhouse Walker, or if less attention had been paid to setting up the multilinear device and just centred around Coalhouse’s story instead, this altogether excellent work could have been pushing my top five, even. I’m pretty happy with it where it is.

So with the next post we finally count down my top ten books of this year.

Something funny occurred to me the other day, namely that since I'm counting down a list already freely available to peruse, and have posted my 88 other choices and two exceptions on this very blog, you have all the material necessary to compile my top ten yourself. The only thing you don't have (if you can be bothered going to all that effort anyway) is the order in which they placed. That, together with justifications, will all be revealed in the next exciting installment...