Books: A Deka-Log

I don't know if he knows it, but my father has OCD. He doesn't suffer from OCD, he just functions with it. Actually, I don't know if he could function without it. The astounding volume of information in and about our world is daunting to some and totally disabling to others. Others find it exciting, and still others never notice it, or, if they do, quickly do their utmost to forget they did. My father's OCD enables him to function amidst what would otherwise be a disabling amount of information, because he is of the scholarly type. He is an Intellectual, in the classical sense. He would have been sent to the Gulag had the timing been right (or wrong, of course).

For as long as I can remember, my father has worked obsessively on some project. The projects change every few years (his current dedication is the longest-lasting thus far), but each, to me, stems from the same impetus: an obsessive, compulsive need to organize the information around him into an order that is logical and consumable. For example, one project, when I was very small, was literature. I do believe that my father was always a lover of books. He wrote his never-published novel in his late 20s/early 30s, living in a by-the-week room rental in San Francisco's Chinatown, sharing a bath down the hall, eating ramen noodles, and drinking at Vesuvio. He's the original hipster. The way in which he approached literature, when I was very small (perhaps five and six and seven years old) is distinctly illustrative. Rather than choosing books at random, by mood, by recommendation, he chose to read each Nobel Prize winning Author's most famed novel. Additionally (and this is key), he kept spiral notebooks in which he would write (in those pre-laptop late 1980s) book reports - a summary, and, I imagine, a few thoughts and insights as well. To an outsider it might seem odd, then, that he now reads almost no literature, and instead spends his time marking historical events in various periodicals for inclusion in his leviathan website (which documents the history of the world in time line format: http://www.timelines.ws/), but I read this as a continuation of his life's work (which work keeps him "sane," which work keeps him "functioning," which work keeps his mind from wandering into the darker territory that often leaves Philosophers, Mathematicians, and all other brands of thinkers lying on their backs unable to turn over and get up (cf. Gregor Samsa).

Throughout my childhood (ages four to fourteen, at least), my father and I had a Saturday routine that included his dropping me off and picking me up from dance class, us having lunch together (nice days: picnic in Golden Gate Park; not so nice days: chicken chow mein and coke at Hung Yeung), and a trip to the library. Usually, he would sit in the research section, copying figures out of the newsprint volumes of Value Line (recall the pre-internet days) into still other spiral-bound notebooks (my mother once misdiagnosed his OCD in a rather Jungian judgement: "oh, he's just a scribe," not comprehending the drive behind his perhaps unconscious compulsion to copy the world into his little notebooks. This project). Meanwhile, I would wander the childrens', then young adults', and eventually fiction sections of the library, choosing a stack of five to ten novels to last me the week. I was a very quick reader, and with no siblings and few friends, I had usually digested at least half of my stack before the weekend's close.

My father repeatedly suggested that I keep a record of what books I had read; bulldozing through the library as I was, he doubted whether I would remember any of what I had consumed, and gave me notebooks in which to write book reports of my own. I hated book reports, however (perhaps, if in second and third grade, I'd been taught to write papers as I would later be taught in high school, I would have been more inclined to produce such interpretive documentation). I refused not only to write reports on my personal reading, I refused to even keep a list. When I was in high school, long after he gave up literature for best-selling books on tape, he again pushed me to keep a list of the books I was reading. When I was in college, majoring in English and reading on the average a novel a week per English class (and sometimes four classes per semester), he restated the importance of keeping a list. Not once did I heed the advice, because of one part rebellion, one part distraction, and one part frustration with the necessary incompleteness of the project (since I hadn't been keeping a list since birth, the list would not be all-inclusive, and would therefore be flawed).

As I age (and yes, despite the tenderness of my youth, I feel very old indeed these days, and at times the nostalgia is overpowering), I realize that I am growing more like my father. I do not share the necessity to document, but my hunger for information is deep, and he trained me, perhaps against both knowledge and will, to like documentation. I keep every bill in a tabbed section of a binder and start a new binder each new year. I file my emails in folders according to author, and wish Microsoft Outlook provided a way to label them by topic for cross-referencing. And now, I blog. I plan to write on each book I finish (and I almost never start a book without finishing - the list of books I've only partially read is short indeed.)*

Meanwhile, during a short (and rare) literary conversation at work, brought about by discussing airplane reading for my boss when I gave him his week's travel itinerary, he asked what I was reading (he knows that I haven't a television or internet at home and do little else but read on my evenings and weekends). He then asked for a list of my top ten books. Now, I've always preferred High Fidelity's Top Five to David Letterman's Top Ten. It's a bit of an apples v. oranges comparison, in that the first encapsulates the "best of" and the other simply strains at humor, but I think it's a relevant comparison nonetheless: the Top Ten strains so often not because of lame humor, but because ten is just too many. It was difficult for me to think of my "top ten books," as he put it, because first: are these the books I enjoyed the most, or the books I think are most important, or the books I think the establishment thinks are the most important; and second: well, ten is just too many. Within a list of ten, there will be two or even three tiers of greatness. One or two books will be what I consider "the best ever," a few will be "really amazing books" that I would be satisfied to have written, and the remainders will be well-written books that are fun to read. But I am an obedient employee, and it sounded like a healthy exercise, so I have complied. Here is my list, in the order I thought of them:

Infinite Jest
David Foster Wallace
This is the best book ever. Yes, it is daunting at 1,100+ pages, some pages taken completely over by rampant footnotes, 200+ of which pages are dedicated to lengthy endnotes, and one needs two bookmarks at all times when reading it. But I reiterate that this is the best book ever. It will become an obsession. I didn't even want to see my boyfriend when I was reading it. I didn't want to sleep. I only wanted to read Infinite Jest. And four years later, the characters, the tropes, the various plots, the images, the details - everything about this book, really, is so potent, so indelible, so evocative - still present themselves in my thoughts, conversation, and writing. I cannot begin to enumerate further details, lest I never cease (that too, being a theme of the book.) It is the hallmark of postmodernism; it is postmodern literature's only masterpiece.

Terra Nostra
Carlos Fuentes
This is a sprawling and quite insane book. Like Infinite Jest, its page count is daunting. Like Infinite Jest, each page (unlike, say, War and Peace) is packed with thrilling writing. There is a bit more historicism in it, and (to be honest) the third section, which deals with a hero's journey in some Apocalypto-like, pre-historical-ish, dream-state journey is rather disappointing and ought to be skipped, unless the reader like that sort of thing (folklore, particularly Latin American, Wicca, earth/moon goddesses, etc. - I find it sort of annoying). The first two sections, though, are filled with crazy Spanish court characters, and it's not unlike a Velasquez painting come to life (not that I like Velasquez' paintings, because I don't - they are too murky and mushy in execution, and his color and composition are rarely interesting, and his portraits are ugly in an uninteresting way; but none of that means that the characters and tone Velasquez portrays don't make for good novels, especially when the writer is as masterful as Fuentes).

Vineland
Thomas Pynchon
This is one of Pynchon's least popular books. It was written in the late 80s, critically panned, and brought the word "thanatoid" into my vocabulary. Aside from The Crying of Lot 49 (which is a lot of fun, but much too short and a wee bit shallow), it is the most readable of Pynchon's books. The most famous of Pynchon's books would be Gravity's Rainbow (which I loathed), or perhaps it's predecessor V. (which I also loathed). I read it quite some time ago, and the characters and plot are far from crisp in my mind, but I remember details, and moods, and I am attached to these details and these moods. I am attached, intensely, to his description of the thanatoidal surf rock. It's not unlike a deeper darker Kurt Vonnegut, an author whose books, though I love them, don't make this list, perhaps because they are too readable.

Confederacy of Dunces
John Kennedy Toole
A brilliant, hilarious romp (oh I hate to use that word and make this sound like a romantic comedy). There is a good story behind the publication of this novel, and I will not recount it here. That's what google and wikipedia are for. The writing, like the protagonist, is inflationary, caustic, and precocious in a paradoxical way, for although the protagonist is an adult, he lives still with his mother and is emotionally something of a bloodsucking child. I'm not a good enough writer to write about the brilliance of Toole's writing. It is satire, but it is tender; it is robust with (earthy) love and abhorrence for life, society, intellect. It is the funniest book I've ever read, but still one of the smartest.

The Bear
William Faulkner
This is a little book - a novella - found in a Three Stories volume long out of print. This is a work of mood and tone and darkness and feeling. It's not as difficult as other works by Faulkner. It's also (I think) more rewarding. It is, in a way, what Moby Dick ought to have been, or is said to be by those who haven't actually slogged through it, but set in the woods, of course, rather than on the sea. First published on its own in Harper's, Faulkner later included it in revised entirety in his novel Go Down, Moses, which I have not read, and probably should.

Sexus/Plexus/Nexus
Henry Miller
Here I may be cheating because these seem to be three books. They are, actually, three volumes in a series (The Rosy Crucifixion). Written later than the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, these books blend an increasingly philosophical curiosity with Miller's more well-known lusty habits of fucking, eating, and living beyond his means. Miller is the only author of semi-fictional memoir that I've encountered, and while I don't swoon for his language or tone the way I do for that of other writers on this list, the rawness and accessibility - the lusty plainness of it - echos loudly in my own writing.

The Tidewater Tales
John Barth
Another sprawling, brilliant, postmodern tome. A good knowledge of literature isn't mandatory for reading this book, but it helps. A love of literature and storytelling, however, is mandatory, if you are to enjoy the book at all. The protagonists are a literary couple of some breeding, pregnant, on their sailboat (I know, I know, it's a bit Lacoste and country club, and yes, it's a very white book, and yes, it is very, well, preppy. But try to let go of that. There's nothing inherently wrong with being 30-something, happily married and happily pregnant, from a bit of old money, and literature-obsessed. I think. Um. Yeah.) Anyway, the book does quite a bit of riffing on The Odyssey, Don Quixote, and The Arabian Nights. John Barth is a brilliant writer, if a bit overbred (if this book is just too stuck up for you, try The Sot Weed Factor. If that is too stuck up, try The Floating Opera). Hubby is an author, postmodernly of the postmodern variety, who has postmoderned himself into a hyperintellectualized version of writer's block. Mom-to-be is a professional, practicing storyteller whose personal history includes a terrible waspy marriage gone awry and a possibly symptomatic short stint in a monogamous lesbian relationship. The book is far from perfect, and I wonder whether I wouldn't like a crack at editing it, but ultimately it is the sweetest (and smartest) love story I've read. Yes, read it with your lover, or at least read the sweet, sweetly dirty parts aloud to your lover if your lover otherwise hates postmodernity in literature.

J R
William Gaddis
Gaddis may be known for being unreadable, and this book is indeed very difficult. I showed it to my mother and she couldn't understand why I would want to bother. It is quite a bother, but it is epiphanically worth the effort. In another postmodern urge, the book is nearly devoid of exposition, comprised completely of almost slavishly reproduced dialogue; discourse markers (e.g. "uh-") are all included, as are mid-sentence (and mid-word) breaks, interruptions, etc. The most challenging and most brilliant sections detail an executive conversing with two different parties on two different phone lines, a secretary (or two) and a guest in his office, all simultaneously (as he does in our real world). Further, the speakers are rarely if ever identified by anything other than their style of discourse. A new speakers' speech is flagged by a line break and an introductory dash. What emerges, though, are a myriad of distinct, identifiable voices, shining in comparison to the text of other books, where only the narrator's voice has a tangible particularly.

Mantissa
John Fowles
I wonder whether Fowles is as underrated in his native England as he is here. I never would have heard his name had my father not recommended The French Lieutenant's Woman. While lovely and poignant, that book is nowhere near as - yes, again; I'm sorry - brilliant - as Mantissa. This is - yes, again; I'm sorry - a postmodern - yes, again; ugh - romp, written by about a writer writing. I'm sorry. Maybe it's only because I'm a writer that I like to read writers writing about writers writing. (Did I mention that the obese protagonist of Confederacy is a writer himself as well? Actually, the stats are not so bad - only three or maybe four of my ten are writers writing books about writing. I expected much grosser proportions.) So, yes, this is another one of those, with a healthy dose of intellectual fantasy, Freud, sex, Greeks, and so forth. It's a smart, sexy, writerly book, and it's fairly short and easy and fun. If you think that Freud and Greeks and writing are fun, of course.

Fantazius Mallare
Ben Hecht
This books is very different than the others on the list. It's something of an "aht novel" ("art" with a breathy, haughty accent), written in the 20s, and banned for obscenity. It's extremely decadent (in content and especially diction), fantastic (phantasmagoric), and wrought (linguistically and psychologically). Minimalists: beware. Goth kids: please form a line starting here. The author, Ben Hecht, is the same Ben Hecht as the screenwriter for numerous mid-century films, including Hitchcock's tedious Notorious and Spellbound; please forgive him. He wrote other brilliant books on the same theme as Fantazius Mallare - the psychological tumult of the richly overinflated ego (cf. his semi-autobiographical novel Eric Dorn). There is a sequel - The Kingdom of Evil - which is good, but not as good. Bonus: the book features stunning - and I don't say that lightly - woodcut illustrations by Wallace Smith.

Fin.

or

Basta.


*It is, in chronological order:

1. A Wrinkle in Time (I checked it out of the library and never had time to start it, and for some reason I cannot remember, returned it rather than renewed it on its due date. I suppose it barely qualifies for inclusion in this list, as I never even actually opened it, but I think checking it out of the library ought to count.)

2. The Color Purple (I started reading a classroom copy of it after finishing a standardized test early, so couldn't, of course, take it with me when I didn't have time to finish it. It was far from compelling enough to warrant my ever checking it out from the library.)

3. Native Son (The first of three sections was assigned by my English teacher during my sophomore year of high school. The character's predicament was so absurd and frustrating that not only could I not empathize with Bigger Thomas, I couldn't bear to read anymore of his story.)

4. The Book of Disquiet (Pessoa's dreadfully slow, painstaking compilation of scraps slowed my usually brisk clip along my reading list nearly to a halt. I haven't any problem with slow or difficult books (after all, I've even read Pynchon's Mason Dixon, which is, basically, unreadable), but this, first, barely qualifies as a novel, and second, just became obnoxious. A collection of (depressive) never-completed (or edited) thoughts and aphorisms does not need to be read in a linear or complete manner, despite my usual insistence on linear and complete reading. Ultimately, this book is the crappiest waste of time ever. The first twenty-five pages or so are fun.)