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natehoodreviews · 1 year

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2022 Year End Compilation

The Ancient Minstrel, Jim Harrison

Hm. A meandering, unfocused disappointment. In the introduction Harrison admitted that he surrendered to fictionalizing his autobiography. I wish he hadn’t. His fictitious flourishes only detract from his usually gorgeous prose.

Eggs, Jim Harrison

Hmmm! Considerably drier than I expected. It feels like he abandoned his usual poetic prose in favor of a more traditional―dare I say Russian―psychological study. The result is surprisingly staid.

The Case of the Howling Buddhas, Jim Harrison

HMMM!!! This was dreadful. Harrison has never been embarrassed by sex, but this novella feels like he wrote it with his penis.

Brida, Paulo Coelho

I have no idea if the magical system Coelho presents here is his own invention or not, but personally I don’t really care. I adored this book and its bizarre yet gentle syncretism of paganism and Christianity. I know many find Coelho’s books unbearably twee, but so far all the ones I’ve read have hit the sweet spot between sentimentality and sincerity.

Undermajordomo Minor, Patrick deWitt

At a certain point this book started to feel like deWitt wrote it solely to surprise and outguess himself. That’s the only explanation I can think of for a book that takes so many surreal and thematically nonsensical turns. I enjoyed a good deal of it, but I can’t help but wish deWitt had settled it all on a central point or two. That said, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to forget the most bizarre secret aristocratic orgy this side of Eyes Wide Shut.

The Running Man, Stephen King [as Richard Bachman]

Deliciously, succulently furious. I had no idea King had this kind of fury in him. It made an already lean thriller absolutely propulsive. This was the pulpy palate cleanser I’ve been looking for for a long, long time.

The Far Cry, Fredric Brown

This was...very much not what I was expecting. When I picked this book up, I expected a decently entertaining crime thriller. Instead, it’s a slow-burn psychological drama of a man investigating a murder and becoming obsessed with the dead victim. So much of it predicts Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. The first chunk of the book is a bit dry, but once the obsession begins to really take hold of the protagonist it becomes quite engaging.

Reality Check, Peter Abrahams

Apparently, this book won a Young Adult literary award when it was published. All I can say is that if books this dull were considered industry exemplars at the time, then losing an entire generation of young readers to Twilight and dystopian death games suddenly makes much more sense.

Roadwork, Stephen King [as Richard Bachman]

This book makes an interesting counterpoint with Pet Sematary: both films are, in their own ways, about dealing with grief. But whereas Sematary reacts passively with resignation, Roadwork reacts actively with rage. It’s a bit bloated, but the whole thing still vibrates with the anger that makes King’s Bachman books so compelling.

Fever 1793, Laurie Halse Anderson

A brisk and snappy work of young adult historical fiction. Would be fascinated to see what this book would’ve been if it’d been written in the shadow of our current pandemic and its plague of misinformation and anti-vaxx sentiment.

The Thing Around Your Neck, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Adichie’s short stories all, in one way or another, see people trapped between the push and pull of different identities and cultures, whether they’re racial, ethnic, or geopolitical. The opening story, the ghastly and sad “Cell One,” even extends this to see a young man incapable of adapting to the us vs. them mentality of prisoners and prisoner guards after getting arrested over suspicions of murder. It’s a fantastic collection of stories, even if all of them don’t hit equal heights. A personal favorite is “Jumping Monkey Hill.” I could’ve easily read a book-length version of that one.

Patrimony: A True Story, Philip Roth

Knowing that I’ll probably go through something similar with my own father, reading this book was like placing my hand on a hot skillet.

A Lost Lady, Willa Cather

The elegiac downfall of a man, a house, a woman, a nation, a myth. Lovely, sad, and rich with Cather’s unmistakable sense of place.

Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson

“I had a moment’s glory that night, though. I was certain I was here in this world because I couldn’t tolerate any other place.”

The Violent Bear It Away, Flannery O’Connor

Only someone with a devout faith could write a book with such venom towards organized religion.

The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon

Perhaps choosing this as my first novel to read while mentally burnt out after finishing a semester of seminary wasn’t the best idea.

Mao II, Don DeLillo

Terrifyingly prescient in its vision of a future where terrorism replaces the written word as the most effective means of mass communication. However, the book itself feels inherently disjointed, even within the context of DeLillo’s usual chronological and POV flourishes. Only the prologue and epilogue at the mass Moonie wedding and the revolutionary unrest in Beirut told from the perspectives of the book’s two central women seem to actually engage with DeLillo’s thesis of “the future belongs to crowds.” The middle clump of the book is mostly—both figuratively and literally—tortured writer porn.

Running Dog, Don DeLillo

Migraine-inducing in its byzantinism. This novel’s first half where it was just a pulpy spy thriller was more fun than the philosophically nihilistic second. The actual content of Hitler’s home movie was a brilliant coup, but it did little to relieve the overall turgidness of the overcomplicated narrative.

A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories, Flannery O’Connor

An essential Catholic corrective to the current of gloomy Calvinism that infects so much of American literature. The title story, “The River,” and “A Temple of the Holy Ghost” are sad and beautiful while “Good Country People” and “The Displaced Person” are deliciously nasty.

The Magic Barrel, Bernard Malamud

I enjoyed the modern Jewish parables well enough, but the “American Jew in Italy” stories sapped almost all of my enthusiasm out from reading this book.

The Pale King, David Foster Wallace

Somehow, simultaneously, one of the dullest, most thrilling, most banal, and most touching novels I’ve ever read. Wallace delves into the nature of boredom, proving that the ability to navigate mundanity and monotony is just as central to the human experience as the capacity to comprehend beauty. Parts of this novel lodged into my mind like a splinter, none more than the first chapter which might be one of the single most gorgeous pieces of prose in American literature.

A Really Big Lunch: Meditations on Food and Life from the Roving Gourmand, Jim Harrison

Possibly the finest book I’ve ever read about food, eating, the love of both, and how they all inform the act of living as a bodily human being. You can taste the marrow in this book’s bones.

The Book of Daniel, E. L. Doctorow

The fact that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were later proven guilty as sin by declassified Soviet documents does nothing to lessen this book as a chilling portrait of how America scapegoats and lynches its poor, dispossessed, and racially marginalized. Also, I could read Doctorow’s descriptions of NYC crowds, streets, neighborhoods, and markets forever.

Homer & Langley, E. L. Doctorow

Oh, how I wish Doctorow had stretched his imaginary history of the Collyer brothers to include 9/11. Also, I feel like Doctorow might have fumbled a possible creative flourish by not revealing that the book itself was a copy of Langley’s fabled newspaper which, upon completion, managed to speculate on the future.

World’s Fair, E. L. Doctorow

Pleasant enough as a childhood autobiography of growing up in early twentieth century New York City, but at times it felt more like Doctorow was writing a laundry list of sense memories than he was the story of his youth. Also, it’s kind of cringy how much of it was recycled from The Book of Daniel.

The Ponder Heart, Eudora Welty

The rare Southern Gothic comedy that’s genuinely clutch-your-side funny, not the sardonic, wince-through-the-tragedy “comedy” of Flannery O’Connor.

Delta Wedding, Eudora Welty

**heavy sigh** You know what this book reminds me of? Those awful late 70s Robert Altman films where he filled his casts with too many damn characters all with barely anything to do.

As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner

As amazing as everyone says it is. I was a Faulkner agnostic after reading The Sound and the Fury which I admired only on a technical level and Light in August which I didn’t like at all. But this novel was a tour de force portrait of Southern decrepitude writ large with the imagery of the Old Testament and the tragedy of the ancient Greeks.

Mexican Gothic, Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Delightfully morbid, thrilling, and disgusting. Was not expecting this book to go in the direction of weird science, but I’m glad it did.

Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie

It was around the halfway point of this book—right when Saleem and Shiva were about to meet for the first time—that I heard the news that Salman Rushdie had been attacked and stabbed in New York. What a testament for how little has truly changed since his literary career started.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce

Statler: “What was this book called again? A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man?”

Waldorf: “More like Portrait of the Reader as Bored Senseless!”

Both: “D’oh-ho-ho-ho!!”

#2022 in Review

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