Coventry<\/em> (2019) by Rachel Cusk [link<\/a>], Decreation<\/em> (2005) by Anne Carson [link<\/a>], The Art of the Novel<\/em> (2003) by Milan Kundera [link<\/a>], Democracy<\/em> (1984) [link<\/a>], Salvador<\/em> (1982) [link<\/a>], The White Album (1979) [link<\/a>] by Joan Didion, Intimations: Six Essays<\/em> (2020) [link<\/a>] & Feel Free: Essays<\/em> (2019) [link<\/a>] by Zadie Smith, Essayism<\/em> (2017) by Brian Dillon [link<\/a>], The Years<\/em> (2018) by Annie Ernaux [link<\/a>], Walks with Men<\/em> (2010) by Ann Beattie [link<\/a>], The Sea, The Sea<\/em> (1978) by Iris Murdoch [link<\/a>], The Whole Story and Other Stories <\/em>(2004) by Ali Smith [link<\/a>], Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light, 100 Art Writings 1988-2018<\/em> (2019) by Peter Schjeldahl [link<\/a>], Chairs<\/em> (1952) by Eugene Ionesco [link<\/a>], Sculptor’s Daughter <\/em>(1968) [link<\/a>] & Fair Play<\/em> (1989) [link<\/a>] by Tove Jansson, The Paris Review Interviews, I <\/em>(2006) by The Paris Review [link<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n
4 out of 5 points:<\/strong> No chemistry:<\/strong> The one author whose works\u2019 overarching mood feel most suitable to the year 2020 is Joan Didion<\/strong>. Didion with her calculated and artful reportage on the politics and zeitgeist of the Americas in the 70s through to 90s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But to start from the very beginning of 2020, my January days passed with Kundera\u2019s<\/strong> brilliant non-fiction, The Art of the Novel <\/em><\/strong>(1986<\/strong>), and Peter Schjeldahl\u2019s<\/strong> art criticism, Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light, 100 Art Writings 1988-2018<\/em><\/strong> (2019)<\/strong>, which itself turned out to be an artwork molded into literary cast. A few weeks before Covid hit, while on vacation in Paris, I stumbled upon Guy Debord\u2019s <\/strong>The Society of the Spectacle<\/em><\/strong> (1967)<\/strong>, and it occupied a spot on my side table for the next 4 months from where it was occasionally lifted up and read. It was followed by Zadie Smith<\/strong> and Jia Tolentino<\/strong> essay collections, both acute reflections of our modern society and its spectacles, if only a bit skewed towards posing questions relevant to well-off Western metropolitans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Late spring, to complement the quarantine depression, I read a book on climate crisis by Naomi Klein, <\/strong>This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate<\/em><\/strong> (2015)<\/strong>.<\/em> As much as I admire Klein\u2019s knack for anticapitalist subjects and her work as a researcher \u2013 she reads up on her subject for years before writing a book \u2013 the proposed solution to climate crisis (native people demanding historic rights to their land, thereby stopping the oil industry\u2019s expansion) felt all but naive and sugar-coated for a comfortably well-off Western reader. If Klein had pondered on the issue for longer, she may have concluded that the demand for the dirty oil starts from consumer choices, and had thereby suggested to her readers to plainly consume less. I also looked up some classics such as Mythologies<\/em><\/strong> (1957)<\/strong> and A Lover’s Discourse : Fragments<\/em><\/strong> (1977) <\/strong>by Roland Barthes<\/strong>. The prevailing quarantine-age mood may be to blame, but both books read as a pretentious and outdated meditation on subjects that many contemporary, and especially female, writers have illustrated more convincingly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Early summer, I switched to lighter reading, taking on my solo trip to Helsinki a couple of Tove Jansson\u2019s<\/strong> books: her autobiographical short story collection Sculptor’s Daughter<\/em><\/strong> (1968)<\/strong> and the novel Fair Play <\/em><\/strong>(1989)<\/strong>, <\/em>also autobiographical, which depicts the relationship between two female artists, living at opposite ends of an apartment building, their studios connected by a long attic. Jansson\u2019s short stories offered a nostalgic lookback into childhood, with our family on boat trips on Finnish lakes and exploring the forest paths, acutely experiencing the animal and plant life around me. The Sea, The Sea<\/em><\/strong> (1978)<\/strong> by Iris Murdoch<\/strong> was a shamelessly amusing novel to read, a modern-day Netflix show with all its unforeseeable turns and a pace that refused to slow down right until the end. Murdoch\u2019s book was also entertainingly British with its egomaniacal protagonist, a retired actor and theater director Charles Arrowby, voicing Latin aphorisms and cooking eccentric dishes such as an egg poached in hot scrambled egg. (Iris Murdoch explained the critics of her enlisted meals in the book: \u201cBut me and John eat like this all the time.\u201d) As a review<\/a> in The Guardian put it, Murdoch wrote novels of ideas about love, as well as the occasional love letter to ideas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Reading the collection of interviews with 20th century writers and poets The Paris Review Interviews, I<\/em><\/strong> (2006)<\/strong> felt like binge eating literary popcorn. Each interview was brimming with references to fellow authors, and I finished the book with a list with 50 additional books to read, each feeling urgently major. This also made me complicit in what the British author Rebecca West may have had in mind when she claimed in her own Paris Review interview: \u201cPeople have no desire to read anything new\u2026. They don\u2019t even look onto the past. They look onto the certified past.\u201d But, to paraphrase Dorothy Parker, there is entirely too much good literature around, and something must be done to stop it. The only possible way to deal with this seemed to find and read all those books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I read most of my 2020 canon while in Paris, first in the lush fern-laden oasis in the midst of Jardin de Tuileries, then confined in my apartment in Paris 3rd. During this period, I grew more interested in exploring what a friend called \u201cwriters\u2019 writers\u201d \u2013 authors whose works carry a substantial essence while also being admirable for their form and phrasing. Reviewing my reading notes and Goodreads\u2019 \u201cRead\u201d list, I detect an inclination towards female writers and literary forms more stylized (William H. Gass<\/strong>, Ali Smith<\/strong>, Rachel Cusk<\/strong>, even Annie Ernaux<\/strong>) and at times eccentric (Anne Carson<\/strong>, Brian Dillon<\/strong>, Claire-Louise Bennett<\/strong>) than the traditional novel: essays, short stories, interviews, reportage, poetry. As most of these books are still effectively in my mind, I expanded on a selection of them below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One contemporary author I like to return to is Zadie Smith<\/strong>. I\u2019m a longtime reader of Smith, her White Teeth<\/em> (2000)<\/strong> being a landmark novel of my early 20s. This year, I read her short essay collection on Covid19-induced changes Intimations: Six Essays<\/em> (2020)<\/strong> and Feel Free: Essays<\/em> (2019)<\/strong> which I\u2019d recommend to anyone looking for intellectual yet humorous reportage on our modern society. Pondering on similar subjects was also The New Yorker reporter Jia Tolentino\u2019s<\/strong> book Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion<\/em> (2020)<\/strong>, yet the essays fell short due to their lack of cultural and socio historical context, making the book\u2019s subjects ephemeral, something that I suspect will not happen to Zadie Smith\u2019s or Susan Sontag\u2019s writing. Tolentino\u2019s was nonetheless a blissful and entertaining book, you can check out the opening essay here<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Another essayist I read, this one writing mostly art criticism (for Frieze), was Olivia Laing<\/strong>. Her 2020 collection Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency<\/em><\/strong> <\/em>was an intelligent excursion into the lives of artists and literary figures such as David Wojnarowicz, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Agnes Martin, Joseph Cornell, Derek Jarman and Hilary Mantel. Laing\u2019s other book, The Lonely City<\/em><\/strong>, written four years earlier, also relied on art as a medium for exploring the loneliness of metropolises (enter the works of Edward Hopper).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Strolling in the Shakespeare & Company bookstore, I spotted The Rings of Saturn<\/em> (1995) <\/strong>by W. G. Sebald<\/strong>, an author revered by many of my friends, in a bookstore and gave it a read. I can\u2019t say that I disliked its quasi-philosophical meandering from one 19th century curiosity to another (consider the history of silkworm farming, or herring fishing, or Rembrandt\u2019s paintings), but the style was not what I was currently interested in. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In November, the anti-capitalist stars aligned and I happened to watch Godard\u2019s Masculin Feminin<\/em> (1966) while reading Adorno\u2019s <\/strong>Minima Moralia<\/em><\/strong> (1951)<\/strong> and Perec\u2019s <\/strong>Things <\/em><\/strong>(1965)<\/strong>, each a meditation on and a disapproval of consumerist society. Together with Debord\u2019s <\/strong>The Society of the Spectacle <\/em><\/strong>(1967)<\/strong> and Ernaux\u2019s <\/strong>The Years<\/em><\/strong> (2018)<\/strong>, these works made me wonder how intellectuals were criticizing capitalism already 60 years ago and regardless, it has steadily advanced, both for better and worse. Ignorance is bliss, and one probably shouldn\u2019t read these books unless willing to feel discomfort for daily lifestyle choices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During my last weeks in Paris, I rediscovered the short story collection The Whole Story and Other Stories (2004)<\/em> <\/strong>by Ali Smith<\/strong>, the writer that seems to have a whole lot of fun writing her books that are a treasure trove of puns and playful use of form. I recently heard someone asking why Smith is so \u201cunfriendly towards her readers,\u201d the question implying that her books are unnecessarily literary and difficult to follow along. I\u2019d object and ask \u201cwhat kind of reader?\u201d as it is exactly for this unapologetically whimsical style that I appreciate Smith\u2019s writing the most. Here\u2019s Ali Smith in her The Paris Review interview<\/a>:\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPuns were originally sacred. If you look back at the beginning of the writing down of language, in sacred rites, puns are everywhere. Ritualists in religions used puns to mark the important, the holy, or the sacred places in the ceremony. A pun heralds or marks the point at which transformation takes place, where a magic thing happens.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n +<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe carry with us all the people who have made us and the people we make and the lives we make, and the world we make continues on from what we make of it.\u201c<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n An even more random list of short stories, interviews, and essays that caught my attention, skewed towards works published in the past three months + what\u2019s available online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Short stories: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Color and Light<\/em> by Sally Rooney, link<\/a> Essays & reportage:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n What Have We Done to the Whale?<\/em> by Amia Srinivasan (New Yorker), link<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n While every single book in the \u201cFave\u201d list above left its undeniable mark, some were especially consequential. Nonetheless, I wouldn\u2019t recommend the below-listed books to everyone, especially to readers who are into literature with a consistent narrative and little patience for literary fl\u00e2neur<\/em>s. Of these authors, Rachel Cusk Annie Ernaux, and Tove Jannson are the least eccentric yet no less moving authors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cEvery so ofter, for offenced actual or hypothetical, my mother and father stop speaking to me. There\u2019s a funny phrase for this phenomenon in England: it\u2019s called being sent to Conventry. I don\u2019t know what the origins of the expression are, though I suppose I could easily find out.\u201c <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Playful self-aware irony is the trademark of Rachel Cusk\u2019<\/strong> writing, one that can divide readers into two groups: acolytes and critics. While her writing style is radically pragmatic, the borderline cynicism is recurrently asking for remittal via an occasional display of vulnerability. The statements of Cusk\u2019s essays sprout from a delicate exploration of human nature and relationships, topics varying from driving a car, making a home to contemplating a divorce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a collection, Coventry<\/em><\/strong> can affect one as the ultimate empathy-builder, all the while distancing the reader from the author. Going through the essays, it is difficult not to start questioning Cusk\u2019s arguably selfish ways of life and the effects her choices have had on others, especially the close family. Contemplating about Coventry<\/em> reminded me of Joan Didion\u2019s<\/strong> essay<\/a> on self-respect. Didion wrote that \u201ccharacter \u2013 the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life \u2013 is the source from which self-respect springs.\u201d It is Cusk\u2019s acceptance of her choices that makes her writing agreeable and enchantingly reflective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Naturally, the best person to propose the most apt explanation of her subjective writing style would be Cusk herself. Here\u2019s a passage from her interview<\/a> with The Paris Review:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBut yes, it\u2019s an ethical situation. I think I could hew that close to the line in a sustained way because I had studied and questioned the ethics of human interaction so intensely in my own life. My lack of ego, of subjective self-regard, has been very useful in that way, even if it\u2019s made experience more painful than it perhaps ought to have been. But it meant I could use myself dispassionately as an example. It gave me a chance to find what was universal in the particular circumstances I had in front of me.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency <\/em>(2020) [link<\/a>] & The Lonely City<\/em> (2016) [link<\/a>] by Olivia Laing, The Poetics of Space<\/em> (1958) by Gaston Bachelard [link<\/a>], The Joke<\/em> (1994) by Milan Kundera [link<\/a>], Miami<\/em> [link<\/a>] (1987) by Joan Didion, The Society of the Spectacle <\/em>(1967) by Guy Debord [link<\/a>], The Rings of Saturn<\/em> (1995) by W. G. Sebald [link<\/a>], Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion<\/em> (2020) by Jia Tolentino [link<\/a>], The Pond<\/em> (2015) by Claire-Louise Bennett [link<\/a>], The New Yorker Stories<\/em> (2011) by Ann Beattie [link<\/a>], Confabulations (2016) by John Berger [link<\/a>], The Courage of Hopelessness: Chronicles of a Year of Acting Dangerously<\/em> (2017) by Slavoj \u017di\u017eek [link<\/a>], This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate<\/em> (2015) <\/em>by Naomi Klein [link<\/a>], An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris<\/em> (1974) by [link<\/a>] & Things: A Story of the Sixties and a Man Asleep<\/em> (1965) [link<\/a>] by Georges Perec<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dept. of Speculation<\/em> (2014) by Jenny Offill [link<\/a>], In the Dark Room (2019) by Brian Dillon [link<\/a>], Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life<\/em> (1951) Theodor Adorno [link<\/a>], Late Writings<\/em> (2007) by Clement Greenberg [link<\/a>], Mythologies<\/em> (1957) [link<\/a>] & A Lover’s Discourse : Fragments<\/em> (1977) [link<\/a>] by Roland Barthes, On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry <\/em>(1975) by William H. Gass [link<\/a>], Things I Don’t Want to Know<\/em> (2013) by Deborah Levy [link<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\nReading through 2020<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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2020 Fave short fiction & longform essays<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
A Temporary Matter<\/em> by Jhumpa Lahiri, link<\/a>
The Winged Thing <\/em>by Patricia Lockwood, link<\/a>
1 = 1 <\/em>by Anne Carson, link <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Between Light and Storm<\/em> by Esther Woolfson (Granta), link<\/a>
The World Brain<\/em> by Mark Alizart (Purple Magazine), link<\/a>
The World Brain<\/em> by Mark Alizart (Purple Magazine), link<\/a>
Plants Know<\/em> by Emannuele Coccia (Purple Magazine), link<\/a>
The Secret Lives of Fungi by Hua Hsu (New Yorker), link<\/a>
The Oldest Forest<\/em> by Lucy Jakub (The New York Review of Books), link<\/a>
My Three Fathers<\/em> by Ann Patchett (New Yorker), link<\/a>
Cooking with Iris Murdoch<\/em> by Valerie Stivers (The Paris Review), link<\/a>
How Leonora Carrington Feminized Surrealism<\/em> (New Yorker), link<\/a>
Eileen Gray\u2019s Infinite Possibilities<\/em> by Martin Filler (The New York Review of Books), link<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nThoughts on + clippings from 2020 favourite books<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Coventry <\/em>(2019) by Rachel Cusk<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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