{"id":9,"date":"2003-02-08T15:10:49","date_gmt":"2003-02-08T20:10:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vmalt\/?p=9"},"modified":"2009-02-05T21:20:24","modified_gmt":"2009-02-06T02:20:24","slug":"whos-next","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/whos-next","title":{"rendered":"Who’s Next"},"content":{"rendered":"

Having run out of shelf space, I’ve been placing newly acquired books in a stack beneath my hall table. It’s my intent to read those titles before getting to work on any of the others that are already shelved in my apartment. The books in this “to read” pile are:<\/p>\n

Gould’s Book of Fish <\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u201c Richard Flanagan (in progress)
\nRembrandt’s Eyes<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Simon Schama (in progress)
\nMinotaur: Sir Arthur Evans and the Archeology of the Minoan Myth<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Joseph Alexander McGillivray (in progress)
\nPattern Recognition<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c William Gibson
\nThe Spooky Art<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Norman Mailer
\nThe Art of Happiness<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c The Dalai Lama
\nMaster Class<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Paul West
\nElla Minnow Pea<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Mark Dunn
\nThe Coast of Utopia<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Tom Stoppard
\nI: Voyage<\/a>
\nII: Shipwreck<\/a>
\nIII: Salvage<\/a>
\nThe Rush for Second Place<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c William Gaddis
\nMendelssohn is on the Roof<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Jiri Weil
\nAbe: Wrong for All the Right Reasons<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Glenn Dakin
\nThe Rainbow<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c DH Lawrence
\nSons & Lovers<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c DH Lawrence
\nCheops: A Cupboard for the Sun<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Paul West
\nGraham Greene Omnibus
\nThe Heart of the Matter<\/a>
\nStamboul Train<\/a>
\nThe Burnt-Out Case<\/a>
\nThe Third Man<\/a>
\nThe Quiet American<\/a>
\nLoser Takes All<\/a>
\nThe Power and the Glory<\/a>
\nPossession<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c A.S. Byatt
\nAll Stories Are True<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c John Edgar Wideman
\nNightwood<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Djuna Barnes
\nNova<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Samuel R. Delany
\nThe Encyclopedia of the Dead<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Danilo Kis
\nPhilip Roth & the Jews<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Alan Cooper
\nGothic<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Richard Davenport-Hines
\nLittle, Big<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c John Crowley
\nUnderworld<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Don DeLillo
\nA Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Dave Eggers<\/p>\n

One thing to know about me is that I’m a man who qualifies virtually everything. So, to clarify one impression that I’m afraid this list of unread books might give, I’d like to make some points about the final two selections.<\/p>\n

I don’t like Don DeLillo’s work in general. I think he’s overrated and tends to obfuscate as a replacement for having something to say. My opinion is somewhat mirrored by B.R. Myers in his Reader’s Manifesto<\/em><\/a>, which was first published in the Atlantic Monthly<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

I first tried reading Underworld<\/em><\/a> shortly after it was released, a season that saw strong new works from a number of older writers (Thomas Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon<\/a><\/em>, Philip Roth’s American Pastoral<\/a><\/em>, and Normal Mailer’s The Gospel According to the Son<\/a><\/em>). I dropped the book after 30 pages, when it became evident to me that DeLillo’s writing was nowhere near the level of those other three authors. During an early passage, a man in the 1950s discourses about the Importance of baseball. I was stunned that a writer with such affection for the game, beginning what many felt to be his magnum opus, felt the need to try to tell the reader everything of importance about the sport, rather than finding a way to show it to us. I decided I had better things to do than subject myself to the rest of the book.<\/p>\n

Taking that into account, I’m willing to give it another chance. I saw the book recently in the “to sell” box in my attic space. I thought about something Harold Bloom once wrote in The Western Canon<\/a><\/em>, about several contemporary writers whom he most definitely did not think would reach canonical status. He wrote:<\/p>\n

Robert Lowell and Philip Larkin are here [on this list of canonical writers] because I seem to be the only critic alive who regards them as over-esteemed, and so I am probably wrong and must assume that I am blinded by extra-aesthetic considerations, which I abhor and try to avoid.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In that spirit, I’m willing to give Underworld<\/em><\/a> another chance.<\/p>\n

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius<\/em><\/a> is in the same boat. I picked up a paperback copy of the book in Heathrow during a business trip to Milan in the fall of 2000 (a journey that warrants another rambling entry in this blog). I read half the book during the trip, and was astonished at how boring it all was. Outside of a few genuinely touching or funny passages about the difficulties of a 20-something man raising his kid brother, the book was almost completely lifeless. The facile PoMo stance of the author also served to help me develop one of my more severe aesthetic critiques: my dislike of works that make middle-brow people feel smarter than they are. This is a refinement of a principle I used to refer to as the “lowest college denominator,” which I’ll expound on at length some other time.<\/p>\n

Suffice to say, inclusion of smarty-pants postmodernist tricks and pre-emptive, but logically specious arguments to counter any critique of his work has placed Eggers firmly in my “lowest college denominator” segment.<\/p>\n

But, again, I’m willing to give it a second shot, and I’ll see if I’m wrong.<\/p>\n

If there’s any public clamor for such a thing, I’ll provide a link to a bibliography of everydarnbook I’ve read since 1989. I only recently (in the last two years) started writing annotations on those titles in the list, which makes for even more fun & excitement (if you lead a sad & boring life).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having run out of shelf space, I’ve been placing newly acquired books in a stack beneath my hall table. It’s my intent to read those titles before getting to work on any of the others that are already shelved in my apartment. The books in this “to read” pile are: Gould’s Book of Fish \u00e2\u20ac\u201c … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Who’s Next”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-9","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1461,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/progress-i-guess","url_meta":{"origin":9,"position":0},"title":"Progress, I guess","author":"Gil","date":"April 19, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"At my glamorous day job, I receive a ton of e-mail from PR firms. They pitch articles, send over news items, and announce events and new product launches. Sometimes, they enclose pictures, which is always nice; I can't remember the last time I actually had to go to the \"scanner\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11046,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/low-res-3","url_meta":{"origin":9,"position":1},"title":"Low-res","author":"Gil","date":"January 1, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"In 2017, I read more than 50 books, produced 52 weekly episodes of The Virtual Memories Show, dropped 20 lbs., made major progress on paying off my house, made some actual friends from the podcast, and got a new dog. 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