April + May Roundup

April

1. The End of the Road - John Barth

2. Childhood’s End - Arthur C. Clarke

3. McGrotty and Ludmilla: or The Harbinger Report - Alasdair Gray

4. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce

May

1. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers

2. Speedboat - Renata Adler

3. Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov

4. The Bloody Chamber - Angela Carter

5. The Hearing Trumpet - Leonora Carrington

6. Carpenter’s Gothic - William Gaddis

7. A Frolic of His Own - William Gaddis

From the vantage point of June 10th, it’s been a strange spring, and even without divulging anything outside of this reading recap, that strangeness seems self-evident. I’m therefore unsure whether it’s despite or because of this general state that I happen to have read perhaps three of my… let’s say top 15 - 20 books of all time in the last two months. Now, if that sounds like recency bias, I can’t credibly claim that it isn’t. I always feel that my true, sustained feelings toward books or movies require the passage of time to validate, and for that reason I’m not totally sure if this trio of standouts will stand the test, but for now, I’d have to say that Speedboat, Pale Fire, and A Frolic of His Own were works that I enjoyed reading as much as I’ve enjoyed almost anything.

I’m currently just about a month away (thereabouts—no way to know precisely) from a major life milestone by which point I arbitrarily, a few months ago, decided I would like to be able to list my all-time top ten works—not with any illusion that this would be a final list, but at least something warranting introspection, a worthy snapshot. At this point, I’m still not sure of it, but I think the list is something along these lines, in no order:

• The Recognitions - Gaddis

• Catch 22 - Heller

• The Savage Detectives - Bolaño

• One Hundred Years of Solitude - Marquez

• The Lord of the Rings - Tolkien

• Absalom, Absalom - Faulkner

• Bluets - Nelson

• The Third Policeman - O’Brien

But for those counting—that’s only eight works. Speedboat and Pale Fire might be contending for the final two slots… or maybe a second Gaddis with A Frolic of His Own deserves a spot. Dune stands out in my memory as another book that I enjoyed the heck out of while reading and that has only ascended in my memory. Infinite Jest is one that I read at another strange time in my life and that I plan to re-read this summer, and that I am actually worried I might truly love even more now than I did back then—but I suppose I won’t be able to affirm or refute that feeling till it’s “too late.”

It’s a funny thing to look at my own list of alleged favorites and think—huh, that just doesn’t seem right. But honestly, it just doesn’t. Could any pair of picks for spots nine and ten “fix” that? Certainly not. It’s all an inherently arbitrary thing that no one on earth will ever care about except for me. And for that matter, what’s wrong with how it stands? Is it too disjointed? Too pretentious? Too white guy-ridden? Is it missing something in particular? Missing a vibe that feels essential to my own sense of self?

Of course, all of these questions are inward and rhetorical. They will plague me for another month or so, and then, I suppose, forever.