books and annual reminders, 2023 edition

more of a recap than a ranking

One thing I intend to do in 2024 is reengage with meaningful political organizing. I took a pause for the last year or so, because I knew the first year of full-time teaching would be too intense to allow much else (and of course teaching is meaningful action, if you’re doing it right; teaching kids in a deeply neglected and underserved school to read and think critically isn’t nothing). Let this be my annual reminder – to myself and others – that if you can’t stop thinking about the genocide being committed in Palestine with American tax dollars, or the fact that it’s been freakishly warm in the Northeast for most of December because the climate is collapsing, you should find other people near you who feel the same, and get together to do something about it. Collective action is the only thing that works, and also the only thing that makes me feel less crazed and hopeless.

I don’t think my perspective on this is especially interesting or unique, so I’m not going to go on about it. But if your conscience is weighing on you in this moment, that’s good. Listen to it, and go fucking do something about it.

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I deliberately do not have a Goodreads page, or participate in any kind of reading challenges. Reading is one of the last pleasures I have left that I don’t feel the need to quantify or compete with anyone else, and I want to keep it that way. But I still want to talk about and share the books I loved, so here are some things I read and loved this year, in chronological order.

Running, by Cara Hoffman

I am a rereader. This year I reread two of my all-time favorites, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl, both of which I love more each time. On the first pass, I’m reading mostly for plot: moving along to find out what happens, keeping new characters and new names straight. On the second pass, I already know the world of the book and who’s who, so I can appreciate the finer points: the writing itself, little pieces of foreshadowing or connection or allusion I missed the first time. I have read The Mysteries of Pittsburgh maybe ten times now, and each time I notice something new. Maybe this just speaks to my inattentiveness or poor memory, but it is a pleasure to revisit old favorites and, occasionally, be surprised by a plot twist I’d completely forgotten.

So I first read Running in 2022, but I liked it more the second time. I think that’s because I was expecting a more conclusive resolution the first time, which never came. The first time, I felt that it was a deeply nihilistic book, and in some ways it is. But it does have a heart, one that’s all the more memorable for being what’s left when all the societal trappings are stripped away. Running is about three young runaways in Athens in the late eighties, an American girl and two British boys, living in a seedy hotel and scamming tourists to pay for a meal and a few drinks per day. Bridey, the main narrator, is this near-feral nineteen-year-old who’s gotten from rural Washington to Athens by shedding everything she didn’t absolutely need to stay alive. It is sharp and vivid and shocking, even as we follow Milo, one of the English boys, into the aftermath, as he struggles to reconcile his principles with his adult life.

The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta, by Mario Vargas Llosa

Peruvian revolutionaries! Leftist infighting! Repressed homosexuality! A novel within a novel, about a writer finding the truths he can lie about to make them truer! I loved this one. I read most of it in Puerto Rico in February, on remote beaches and on the balcony of my place in Santurce, overlooking the roosters in the alley. Content warning for pages and pages of Trotsky-vs.-Stalinist infighting within twelve-person Revolutionary Fronts (though I personally enjoyed it greatly – why are left spaces like this, and why have they been like this forever?)

I had only ever read Vargas Llosa in Spanish, while in Peru, and I was aware at the time that I was missing things, thanks to my own linguistic deficiencies. For being such a neoliberal drip in real life, the vision he presents, of a world that truly strips away imperialist social prejudice, is so striking here. Obviously he thinks that vision is doomed, but I think both the real author and the author in the story have deep respect for Mayta, the fictional revolutionary, and for the strength of his convictions. If you’re not put off by all the communist hair-splitting, I highly recommend it.

Dancer from the Dance, by Andrew Holleran

Bought in Provincetown in June, begun on the gay beach in Chicago in July. Here is a ludicrous comparison: Sutherland, the flamboyant queen who guides us through gay New York in the 70s, is Roger Sterling from Mad Men, a character you can’t take your eyes off of despite his alarmingly antiquated racial politics. Sutherland acts as an unhinged sort of mother to Malone, a late bloomer finally exploding onto the scene after years of repression (it will not surprise you that this resonated deeply with me).

I love Malone realizing that ultimately he is in love with all of New York City – not with any one man, so much as the possibility of the next man. And although he starts to feel jaded and tired, to dream of his farm out in Montana somewhere – this is it for him, really, this is living. He wants to want that quiet life. But really, he would eschew all the wonders of the world to watch Ramón and Angel play stickball in the alley in the late afternoon light.

Chilean Poet, by Alejandro Zambra

So, while Wonder Boys will always be my favorite book about writers, this is an addition to my personal canon. It’s one of those books that just gets the way life is – that it mostly is, on the day to day, about your favorite room in your house where all your books live, and the thing you’re trying to write that isn’t quite working, and the funny, sweet, strange days you share with the people closest to you. (I was also instantly charmed by poor Carla’s first sexual experiences: it just hurts sometimes, and not just the first time! And nobody talks about it, least of all literary men! A man (I assume straight) who can write readable sex, give him a prize!)

And it is also a book about language – about poets, and thus about words, and about words in translation. I loved all the interplay between Pru and Vicente on this, the little linguistic jokes, the bad translations, and the voracious appetites of all these readers that transcended language. I loved the way Gonzalo, as a professor, cited easily from this vast constellation of books. How Virginia Woolf was as much part of his own stream of consciousness as the most obscure Chilean poet, as much as his own life with his stepson.

And I thought the translation was really good - fluent, fluid, natural-feeling. Translations aren’t always. Sometimes they really feel like translations, too stiff. But this felt like it had somehow existed in Spanish and English simultaneously, in its different but equivalent versions. Very meta, the translation of a book about poets communicating across language – a book that surely can’t be the same in two languages, because there are irreconcilable little gaps between Spanish and English. And yet it works so well, and I loved it.

Darryl, by Jackie Ess

Not for the faint of heart, but I couldn’t stop talking about this one for weeks after reading it. It reminded me a bit of Nevada, in the way that most of it is Darryl’s internal monologue – thinking through his relationship to sex and masculinity and friendship and male hierarchies, and also how it feels nice when he shaves his body and wears slightly tighter clothes. It is the story of someone who cannot resist the urge to turn over every rock, who against all his better judgment just has to know.

Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott

This is already getting too long, and surely you all know what Little Women is about already. You perhaps do not recall (I did not) just how many times Jo expresses that she needs to be a boy immediately, and how many times Laurie calls her “my good fellow.” Jo and Laurie clearly planted the seed in my young brain that maybe I could just be a boy and boys would like me anyway. (And what a trip to read it again now, as a lifelong Jo who has transitioned into a Laurie – from a stubborn, gender-nonconforming writer girl, to a gentle, witty, goofy boy most comfortable with his girlfriends!)

How to Blow Up a Pipeline, by Andreas Malm

I recommend all the books on this list, but this is the one I would implore anyone and everyone to read. I would especially implore anyone who considers themselves a liberal or progressive person, but who balks at the idea of destroying corporate property in the service of, say, halting the expansion of fossil fuel production. I can’t really understand how anyone with a soul could have made it to 2023 without becoming significantly more radical in their politics. But if you haven’t, read this. And if you have, also read this, as a reminder to get off your ass and do something that means something.