Best of 2005: Books of the Year

2005 was a horrendous year for narrative. McCarthy published a new novel, yet I never think of it. Doctorow’s The March is awful, and the ass kissing he received from critics feels like an elegy; can’t cut it old man? Feel sorry for ya; here’s Michiko to move a few copies off the shelves. I still need to read that Ishiguro, and Vollmann may have something with his prize winner, but I aint got the stomach for it, not yet anyway. Remember that pledge I made a year ago to read Mason & Dixon? Didn’t happen. I blame soulseek and the vegetarian diet.

This year’s redeeming lit quality came in the form of neglected authors, and it was a treat to burn through Maugham, Forster, Scott Spencer, Pete Dexter, Jennifer Egan, Michel Houellebecq and Richard Yates.

Had some fun with reference books, namely Thompson’s film encyclopedia, and the Trouser Press Record Guide, which needs an update. Stienstra’s CA fishing guide is indispensable, and might even appeal to non-fisherman types who want to know the record steelhead weight (37.8, Smith River – I’m on the hunt).

Books pissed me off. O’Hara’s ancient Appointment in Sammara sucked hard, and save for the epigraph wasn’t worth the nickel I paid. EM Forster’s first book was so shitty I forgot the title. I read the terrible Looking For Moe by Daniel Duane, but he was somewhat redeemed by his non-fiction book Caught Inside, about a year of surfing Santa Cruz. He has a new novel out called A Mouth Like Yours. Good title, but I’m the smut king in Santa Cruz until the police tell me otherwise. Then there was Housekeeping. Goddam I hate it when I can’t stop reading a book that makes me angrier with every page. I really want to meet a person who enjoyed this Robinson lady, because I think she’s crap and I can prove it. She won an award for Gilead, which I wont let make me angry.

Genre was hit and miss. Caleb Carr tried to reintroduce Sherlock Holmes, and no one gave a shit. Andrew Taylor’s An Unpardonable Crime still rings sound and is light years better than any Da Vinci Code oriented airport crap.

Women let us down this year. Sittenfeld’s Prep was unreadable, Elizabeth McKenzie’s Stop That Girl fell flat. Katherine Mosby followed the excellent The Season of Lillian Dawes with a poor sequel, Twilight. Zadie Smith? Never read her. Cute in a patchouli kinda way. Naomi Wolf had a new book about her father, or was it about Harold Bloom’s sweaty palms? I’ll never know.

The book of the year is Freakonomics. No, that’s just me kidding ya. No fucking way will the nod go to a piece of non-fiction hubris that all of blue America raved about. Since it’s so good, have you done one thing different in your life because of it? Hell no. Some authors teach you important lessons, like the right amount of drinks you need before propositioning a chick. Freakonomics can F off.

I read 6 nonfiction books, which is 6 more than I’ve read in the last decade. I still don’t know dick about Scott Fitzgerald, crime rates, Neil Young, Sam Cooke, Ben Franklin, or surfing, but if the fiction output is forcing me to the NF section, I’m in a world of hurt.

I’m left with the true and tested, and it comes down to this: the best time I had with a book this year was Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night, because it’s a flawed wonder, and because you need to know that the perfect way to reclaim yourself after you have balled a twenty-three year old film starlet behind your wife’s back is this; walk around a bit, get some sun, hit a few bars, then hit a few hotel bars; sit down and order more drinks and dance with the prettiest girl in the hotel ballroom, then insult her; go outside for more air and punch a taxi driver; when they haul you into jail, insult everyone and punch an undercover police officer; sit back and yell out while the other members of the force pound and kick you bloody.

We meet Dick Diver and his wife Nicole in Book 1, which is the midpoint of his marriage. Book 2 takes us back to Dick and Nicole’s beginning, and Book 3 ties things extremely messy, which is the only way these people can be tied. Dick and Nicole and their circle are introduced as idle dilettantes living the high life on the French Riviera. The opening book is extremely uneven; this is done as effect, because until the subsequent books are read one cannot find the center of the novel, let alone a reason to care about these folks.

Book 2 is clearly the heart of the book; we get Nicole in the sanitarium and her letters to Dr. Dick, and later, her diary entries where she exhibits a step out of her illness, which Dick cannot and does not want to see. He needs Nicole somewhat damaged to justify his relations with Rosemary Hoyt (the film girl) and his lack of work ethic. Nicole is extremely wealthy, and Dick’s attempts to counter her cash are met with opulence that he can’t ignore, nor does he want to. Nicole’s recovery is timed and parallel to Dick’s demise, and it’s sad to watch him disintegrate.

The prose in Tender proves Fitzgerald was a fucking genius, and there’s a heatstroke quality to the writing that’s warm, charged, and dangerous. Scott gets in his quips (When you’re sober you don’t want anyone around, and when you’re tight nobody wants to see you; Don’t you know there’s nothing you can do about people?; I never understood what common sense meant applied to complicated problems; there’s a quick trick or else I don’t know bridge), but because none have the singular bite of Gatsby’s line about Mrs. Tom Buchannan’s voice, critics have either panned this book or grossly elevated it.

I heard one critic-idiot say Gatsby was a flawed warmup act to Tender, and luckily I don’t know what he looks like because I would deck him if we met. Others want to dismiss everything Scott wrote besides Gatsby (some don’t like Gatsby either; retards), and I was once in that camp. Tender took me three distinct tries to crack, and I made it. Rewards are sonic booming for the patient.

Cop-out you say? Sure, I'll take the heat. But if you can honestly look at this list and find one book that will be read in ten years time, I'm buying. Banville old man, hats off. You're the first neglected author of 2006.