I hate end-of-the-year best-of lists. They are short-sighted and usually hive-mindish. They feel counter-productive or something, like they are trying to trick you. Instead, here’s a list of everything I read this year, 135 books, in order. This doesn’t include chapbooks or magazines or online things, not to mention the ridiculous piles of new stuff by excellent people stacked inside my house. Of these, I have highlighted the ones I remember most (which turned out for the most part to be stuff that came out way before 2012, but years are stupid so you should still consider them as part of now). Usually, though, I feel I have a pretty good filter for knowing what I’ll enjoy before I pick it up, and if I don’t like something I stop reading it like I did with Jonathan Lethem’s awful Fear of Music. So, other than that one, the books below might be worth you looking into in 2013.
One DOA, One on the Way by Mary RobisonBlueprints of the Afterlife by Ryan BoudinotSister Stop Breathing by Chiara BarziniAutoportrait by Édouard Levé: A sublime list of personal projections—“I find myself uglier in profile than straight on,” and “Art that unfolds over time gives me less pleasure than art that stops it”—by a guy who would later kill himself. Feels kind of like reading text carved on a tall dark marble wall. I don’t think anyone could write this book in this way now that the internet exists, and that makes it a little hole in the air.
These Dreams of You by Steve EricksonVicky Swanky is a Beauty by Diane WilliamsHHhH by Laurent BinetImpressions of Africa by Raymond RousselHelsinki by Peter RichardsThe Secret of Evil by Roberto BolañoVertigo by W.G. SebaldRogue Male by Geoffrey HouseholdErik Satie Watusies His Way Into Sound by Jeff AlessandrelliTransfer Fat by Aase Berg (x2)The History of the Siege of Lisbon by Jose SaramagoTo Hell With Sleep by Anselm BerriganWhere Art Belongs by Chris KrausThe Journalist by Harry Mathews: An insane practice in journal writing where the titular journalist gets more and more obsessive and specific about recording everything that happens to him daily while also trying to classify all the information more and more ornately. I loved how it mixed uncontrollable thought with objective everyday behaviors more and more intensely until the novel itself seemed to be collapsing on itself, without making the reader feel like collapsing. Easily my favorite Mathews, and one of the most satisfying books I’ve read from the Ouilipo.Triptych by Claude Simon: This book kind of works like a text-film spliced from three different tapes, switching back and forth without letting you know when and building these fucked up image-graphs that keep spooling into darkness. Kind of like Burroughs but French and somehow more flat and eerie architecture.
Skin Horse by Olivia CronkThe Other Poems by Paul LegaultA Map Predetermined and Chance by Laura WetheringtonCrunk Juice by Steve RoggenbuckNo, Not Today by Jordan StemplemanParty Knife by Dan MagersMy Life in CIA by Harry MathewsLife Is With People by Atticus LishThe No Hellos Diet by Sam PinkPercussion Grenade by Joyelle McSweeneyChess Story by Stefan ZweigMeat Heart by Melissa BroderAnother Governess / The Least Blacksmith by Joanna RuoccoDivorcer by Gary LutzXorandor by Christine Brooks-RoseThe Malady of the Century by Jon LeonCunt-Ups by Dodie BellamyOn the Tracks of Wild Game by Tomaž ŠalamunAntigonick by Anne CarsonMagic Hours by Tom BissellAlien vs. Predator by Michael RobbinsTake Care Fake Bear Torque Cake by Heidi Lynn StaplesThis Bright River by Patrick SomervilleWindeye by Brian Evenson (reread): I always look forward to new Brian Evenson and this is one of his best. He writes mental terror better than pretty much anyone, full of bizarre structures and thought-labyrinths like Deleuze cooked into Hitchcock. I like how he makes a story collection feel like a novel, in a hypnotizing kind of way.Duties of an English Foreign Secretary by Macgregor CardInverted World by Christopher PriestThe World Will Deny It For You by Janaka StuckyShort Talks by Anne CarsonImmobility by Brian EvensonI am a Very Productive Entrepreneur by Mathias SvalinaThe Hour of the Star by Clarice LispectorDrought by Debra diBlasiHow I Became a Nun by César AiraEvery Hand Revealed by Gus HansenThe Recognitions by William Gaddis: I’d had this on the floor beside my bed for several years now trying to will myself to finally get around to reading it and I finally did. Probably one of the best reading experiences for me in a long time; felt inspired by the breadth and scope of each paragraph in a way I’d almost forgotten. Felt rich and lyrical while also modern and immediate despite the fact that so little seems to physically happen. A rare book deserving of its stature.Butcher’s Tree by Feng Sun ChenIndependence by Pierre GuyotatMankind by Jon LeonOpen City by Teju ColeJ R by William Gaddis: Much more streamlined than The Recognitions, built mostly out of dialogue that feels unhinged from the beautiful weird little paragraphs that build its backbone. Really feel like Gaddis was angry at the novel and at people so he made this insane thing that kind of just keeps spinning and shitting but that is so singular in how it does that; I can’t think of any other book that works the way this seems to.The Painted Bird by Jerzy KosinskiThe Spokes by Miranda MellisDistant Star by Roberto BolañoI Love Dick by Chris KrausA Million Bears by Spencer MadsenReader’s Block by David Markson (reread)Fear of Music by Jonathan Lethem (half)So We Have Been Given Time Or by Sawako NakayasuGood Morning, Midnight by Jean RhysÁgua Viva by Clarice LispectorIt by Inger ChristensenBig Ray by Michael KimballEvent by Philippe SollersAll the Garbage of the World, Unite! by Kim HyesoonMoby-Dick by Herman Melville: Another one I’d been meaning to read forever and finally did and enjoyed it way more than I imagined. The book seems to get a bad rap in that people always talk about how there are all these long extra parts about nothing but I felt the book was really economical and smart in how it circled its subjects and invoked colors and mechanisms instead of just showing scene after scene. It’s also frequently hilarious and approaches death in surprising ways. Melville was real as fuck to have written this beast in the mid-19th century.My Friend Dahmer by Derf BackderfSlow Slidings by M KitchellHow Should A Person Be? by Sheila HetiDouble or Nothing by Raymond FedermanReplacement by Tor UlvenBlood on the Dining-Room Floor by Gertrude SteinHistory or Messages from History by Gertrude SteinHow Music Works by David ByrneThe Alphabet Man by Richard GrossmanSoulacoaster by R. KellyIt Then by Danielle CollobertThe Savage Detectives by Roberto BolañoWith the Animals by Noëlle Revaz: A fucked up invented form of speaking here, somewhat like brain damaged French ghetto-redneck. The way the narrator speaks is so enchanting in its way that it almost doesn’t matter what happens but the story of a farmer and his suspicion of a new farmhand he hires who seems to be infatuated with his creepy wife is alive with paranoia and anger and weird Beckett-y farm scenes. The shit.Pure Filth by Jamie Gillis and Peter SotosEvery Love Story Is A Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace by D.T. MaxStrange Landscape by Tony Duvert: Finally got to read this after finding it listed on Dennis Cooper’s 100 favorite novels, despite it being long out of print and pricey (I forgot about libraries!). Weird chopping paragraphs in the nouveau roman style juxtaposing constant strange scenes of boys in captivity doing messed up sex acts for money. A good pairing from Grove with Simon’s Triptych above.Thunderbird by Dorothea LaskyFra Keeler by Azareen Van der Vliet OloomiIn Time’s Rift by Ernst MeisterProject for a Revolution in New York by Alain Robbe-Grillet: Beautiful reissue of one of R-G’s flat-glassy sex-architecture apparatuses; imagist and chopped-up while objectively descriptive, like wandering around a mostly evacuated city peeking in on shit you weren’t supposed to see.Portrait of the Writer as a Domesticated Animal by Lydia SalvayreAction, Figure by Frank HintonThe Map of the System of Human Knowledge by James Tadd AdcoxThree Poems by John AshberyDonogoo Tonka, or The Miracles of Science by Jules RomainsNear to the Wild Heart by Clarice LispectorCity: An Essay by Brian LennonSelected Poems by Mary RuefleCarnival by Jason BredleNormance by Louis-Ferdinand Céline: Pretty much just one 450-page scene set during an air-bombing of France by the Nazis, written in Céline’s trademark angry and immersive prose. It’s incredible in how it draws you through the minute-to-minute with a bizarre intensity that never flags, and goes pretty much anti-sentimental despite the mass carnage; the narrator spares no would-be war victims, pretty much insisting that they are stupid human shit and deserve to die. It’s funnier than it sounds, and weirdly immersive in a rare way.A Breath of Life by Clarice LispectorThe Book of Interfering Bodies by Daniel BorzutzkyThe Museum of Eterna’s Novel by Macedonio FernándezConversations with Professor Y by Louis-Ferdinand CélineMahu, Or, The Material by Robert PingetThe Source by Noah Eli GordonMad Science in Imperial City by Shanxing WangPromising Young Women by Suzanne ScanlonSelected Poems: 1951-1977 by A.R. AmmonsNervous Device by Catherine WagnerThe Bitter Half by Toby OlsonIf You Won’t Read, Then Why Should I Write? by Jarrett KobekCure All by Kim ParkoThinking About Magritte by Kate SternsThe Memoirs of Jonbenet by Kathy Acker by Michael Du PlessisBalloon Pop Outlaw Black by Patricia LockwoodConnecting Bodies by Claude SimonLight Without Heat by Matthew KirkpatrickThe Obscene Bird Of Night by José DonosoTomorrow In The Battle Think On Me by Javier MaríasQuinnehtukqut by Joshua HarmonI Love Artists by Mei-mei BerssenbruggeFor the Fighting Spirit of the Walnut by Takashi HiraideThe Quantum Manual of Style by Brian MihokWoes of the True Policeman by Roberto BolañoBad Boats by Laura JensenPropagation by Laura ElrickBoth Flesh and Not by David Foster WallaceThe Siege in the Room by Miquel BauçàI am My Own Betrayal by Guillaume MorissetteMulligan Stew by Gilbert Sorrentino: I avoided reading this one for a long time too and now I’m ending the year with it. It’s a hilarious and ridiculous catalog of styles and ideas and satires of itself, with so much stuffed into the place it seems to change every time you think you know what it’s up to. Going into 2013 I’m going to pretend like this book just came out.Previously by Blake Butler - Verbal Paintings of Cartoon Dogs Sexting
@blakebutler
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