Read and Appreciated in 2002
A Year’s Best List
Speaking of John Dos Passos, I discovered him this year and read four of his books the USA trilogy and Manhattan Transfer. It took me a while to acclimatize to his sideways approach to plotting. He doesn’t make neat little plots that tie up in bundles. He’s going for something more like a Robert Altman film. He’s collaging circa-WWI America novelistically. There are recurring characters, but they don’t always meet each other. Or they meet and nothing much happens as a result. Or they drop out of sight and never bubble to the surface of the stew again. It’s a bit like life, but it’s nothing like Dickens.
One political message comes across loud and clear. T. Woodrow Wilson sold America a bill of goods and lead us by the nose into war. Just like FDR, just like LBJ, et cetera, et cetera. Refreshing to meet an author who’s actually pissed off at Saint Woodrow.
Damn, that was an exciting time for American lit. Novelists used to care about serious issues back then. That was back when the Left was unapologetically socialist. Back before the labor movement joined The Combine. Remember all that? I don’t either. I wasn’t around.
And then I read The Big Sleep and Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler. (Wanted to research the hard-boiled detective style. Already familiar with Hammett, and couldn’t stomach Spillane.)
Chandler wrote the Philip Marlowe novels mainly in the forties, but the set dressing is pure l930s California. What surprised me about Chandler is how funny Philip can be about the people he encounters. Phil has a great eye for the minutia of the American class system, and his sense of humor runs very deep through these crime stories. (Which is just what Humphrey Bogart caught so well in the 1946 movie of The Big Sleep.)
Detective novels are a time-honored target for pastiche and parody. Still and all, one has to admit that Raymond Chandler made them run on all six cylinders.
I also read five books of contemporary fiction, including three that were… gasp... spec fic. I seem to remember a weird anthology called Leviathan Tree or something like that, but I can’t recall who was in it. “Some, the books made mad,” keeps running through my head for some reason.
In any case I did read some contemporary fiction in 2002. Unfortunately my former teachers at the Academy of Ancient Trilobites have forbidden me to reveal the titles. I seldom understand their motivations, but I always try to follow their suggestions. When I don’t, they get nasty, and if you’ve ever been stung by the ghost of a sentient trilobite…
But never mind all that. Where was I? Oh yes! Nonfiction.
I found lots of great nonfiction to read in 2002. I’ll flip through ten of my favorites for you.
