Moments in Reading That Salvaged an Often Sour Year

Oh, Mr. Garner, you never suggest books that I don’t want. I have a deep affection for expert literary critics like you against all the Amazon ratings echo chambers that ever were.

Stonking. What a great word!

Great writing and smoking cigarettes a match made in literary heaven. I’ll go have one right now. On the stoop of course.

I recently came across these in old magazine articles about Calvin Coolidge by H.L. Mencken. “In what manner he would have performed himself if the holy angels had shoved the Depression forward a couple of years - this we can only guess, and one man's hazard is as good as another's. My own is that he would have responded to bad times precisely as he responded to good ones - that is, by pulling down the blinds, stretching his legs upon his desk, and snoozing away the lazy afternoons.... He slept more than any other President, whether by day or by night. Nero fiddled, but Coolidge only snored.... Counting out Harding as a cipher only, Dr. Coolidge was preceded by one World Saver and followed by two more. What enlightened American, having to choose between any of them and another Coolidge, would hesitate for an instant?” "There were no thrills while he reigned, but neither were there any headaches. He had no ideas, and he was not a nuisance.” All I am looking for now is another Coolidge, who will promise me nothing except a decent night’s sleep without waking up to further assaults on my peace of mind.

I have been sharing the Menasse quote with everyone I can for the past two days. It says it all.

And yet publishing limps along. The marketing changes. The writers do not change all that much, only in terms of what they write about, and how well they write, which is magnificently, but if you want to get published, one way or the other, you're going to have to display an eager willingness to bow and scrape to the vast litany of places -- the great machine -- where you'll read. I hated it. You will answer question after question (like what state you were born in because where you were born is paramount) to what hotels you will sleep in, if any. Then there will be the inevitable questions about what you write on. What does your office look like. Mine was a picnic table with the other homeless. But that is not what the audience wanted to hear. The prostitute or the real writer. I still fail to see what the concern is, beyond a morbid curiosity, why it's important distinguish typewriters from computers. But readers insist they have the right to know. Where did you go to high school. I lied. I have very little education whatsoever. University is where other people went. The problems in publishing have to do with the sacredness of the audience. It's both a cult and a religion. One in which the editor is the high priest. But the marketing committee runs the dog and pony show. People who can buy books in bookstores don't get things like how a writer can be homeless yet continues to work. She has no choice It's what he does.

The book I loved this year was philosopher Matin Hagglund’s “This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom.” Don’t be frightened off by the title. It is an immensely readable. In a nutshell, “This Life” shows the life we are born into is the only life we’re going get so we should live it because it will soon be over. The book taught me what I already intuitively felt, that am finite, the earth is finite, that I live a dust to dust existence, that heaven is on earth, where it is supposed to be and that my job is to make a good life of it down here, not to wait to get it right in an up-the-sky hereafter. And, beautifully, Hagglund presses his case without sounding harsh and rigid like a Dawkins atheist. I always knew, as ridiculous as it sounds, that I wouldn’t live forever but, “This Life” puts a generous life-giving spin on that once grievous notion. It hard to describe how refreshing it is to be relieved of an eternal life.

Going Underland with Robert Macfarlane was mysterious, unsettling and a little scary, but way more fun than being up here on the earth’s surface these days. My fav book of the year!

Loved the quote about national anthems. In a world of populism, and regionalism, it's well to remember.

this is refreshing in the manner of skin-prick tests for allergies. these verbal jabs will irritate and provoke for days. thank you.

There is more of worth, depth and good sense in any Clive James piece than is found in a year of NY Times op-eds. That’s not to knock the op-eds, just appreciation of a great writer.

...and i thought I was an avid reader. Nope.

[[In 2019, there was no escaping a sour and scalded national mood.]] Sure there was. I worked in a community garden and watched the birds that come to my feeders. Tilling the soil, pulling a garden hose and rolling it back up, spotting a new bird, I felt neither sour nor scalded. Get a hobby. Do something physical. You'll be happier.

Bravo! God save the readers and writers.

From Richard Russo’s “Chances Are . . .”: “Adam didn’t become a different man after eating the apple. He was who he’d always been, except miserable.”

Thank you for this lovely article. And for including this quotation: "The critic Clive James died in November. He wrote, as if in response: 'If you don’t know the exact moment when the lights will go out, you might as well read until they do'.” My sentiments exactly!

The Mueller Report has been novelized and you can check out that scene. Read Mark Caro's The Special Counsel (https://www.mulhollandbooks.com/titles/mark-caro/narrative-mueller-report/9780316496278/) (I'm not getting a kickback for this; just want to spread the word that a great writer has done some more great writing). Thanks for this article. I love the idea of "purposeful reading."

Having just finished "Will and Testament" by Vigdis Hjorth, this has stuck with me: "It was the fact that she had wanted to let go, Klara said, the day after she had saved a man from drowning himself in a Copenhagen canal. It was the fact that she had wanted to let go of the stupid, heavy man and watch him sink to the bottom. One day I'll let go, Klara said." Indeed.

Thank you, Clive James.

Thank you, Dwight Garner. My sanity has been needing confirmation. This piece brightened my day and was a timely reminder of all the ways books and fine writing have always been a refuge. Glamorous sentence[s] indeed.

I cannot trust Garner since his vicious review of Anna Burns’ Milkman. The book won the Booker prize for its illumination of the oppressiveness of tribalism through the compelling voice of a young woman’s struggles. His unnecessarily vicious and demeaning review revealed his ultimately conservative take on modern literature and, perhaps, a bit of misanthropy.

I loved this article. This is the great thrill of reading -- those perfect plays that come either out of nowhere or at the conclusion of a brilliant team strategy. You can feel it in your whole body and in every nook and cranny of the mind and spirit. Can be a single sentence or an entire section. One of Anthony Trollope's books describes an impoverished young woman who has an offer of marriage from a man she finds odious. In his typically long, multi-phrase sentences, Trollope spends a paragraph or two probing the impossibility of her position and the revulsion of her spirit. Then -- here it comes! -- in one of his very rare short sentences, he concludes: "She couldn't do it." The ball soars out of the park and the crowd roars.

Delightful. Thank you!

The best line I've ever read in a novel is from Alan Holinghurst's "The Spell": “ He found himself in front of a 16th century Spanish Saint Sebastian made of brightly glazed pottery. Holes had been left all over it for the arrows, so that it looked like a huge anthropomorphic strainer.“ Brilliant!

If this is the best Dwight could come up with, then writing would seem to be in a lot of trouble. Very prosaic stuff. No big laughs or no examples of how profound a sentence can be. Perhaps he just didn’t read the right books. But if I were editing this piece, my question would have been: So this is the best you could come up with? Actually, I look forward through the year to Dwight’s reviews, so this is a surprise to me. It seems mandatory these days to drag Trump into the middle of everything. That quote from the Mueller report, who exactly is the source? And the earlier quote about what makes a tyrant, is that also a veiled reference to our current president? Seems so.

“The best writers are the ones who tend to write less and smoke more,” Márquez [sic] wrote, “and so it’s normal that they need at least two years and 29,000 cigarettes to write a book of 200 pages. What that means in good arithmetic is that just on what they smoke they spend more than what they’ll earn from the book.” Sheesh, that's a two pack a day habit! It's not just the spending they need to worry about.

My favorite author's quote from this year is: "Thanks to the offences of patriarchy, a lot of the fun has gone out of being human" from prize-winning author Lucy Ellman in a recent interview with the guardian

"In her book “Higher Etiquette: A Guide to the World of Cannabis, from Dispensaries to Dinner Parties,” Lizzie Post wrote about vape pens at weed-centric dinners: “They may be placed to the right of the setting or across the top of the setting either between the place card and dessertware or behind the place card.” End of days?" Huh?? Beginning of enlightenment would be more accurate. As this is all about quotes, as usual, I'll go to Bob Dylan for my thoughts on Mr. Garner's thinking here - "You are a walking antique" who is "bent out of shape by societies pliers". For a chaser, I'll toss in my own favorite word find of 2019 - "Cali Sober". This is people who only smoke pot and gave up alcohol - a far more dangerous drug. I joined this group myself after I found out alcohol triggers something in my pancreas that could kill me - even light drinking. I enjoy a cold beer or good margarita as much as anyone, but do not miss it. Pot is a much safer and better high, and has numerous medical benefits.

What a delightful--and consoling--article! Thank you, Dwight Garner.

From Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida via McEwan's Machines Like Me: "Time hath, My Lord, a wallet at his back wherein he puts alms for oblivion." It sent me back to the play (once I'd finished the novel) and Achilles' speech. Virtue then, I decided, must indeed be its own reward because all the other rewards, at least in these our times, lack any virtue whatsoever.

Dwight Garner’s writing is always a gift. In spite of everything, his optimism doesn’t fail. That alone helps us get through. Thank you, Mr. Garner.

What a joy to read in these times. It felt good to laugh.

I love literature and will have to read some of these books.

Just put down Bleak House to read this. What the Dickens! Thanx Dwight Garner! Always enjoy your reviews!

Wonderful quotes ! I suggest one from Karen Russell’s “Orange World”. To a lover’s question, “Remember how we met?”, his conflicted partner thinks, “ One of the extraordinary adaptive powers of our species is its ability to transmute a stray encounter into a first chapter.” I must credit the owner of a bookstore in Neptune Beach for pointing it out. Thanks to ALL bookstore entrepreneurs.

Garcia Marquez created the magical land of Macondo, where anybody could smoke cigarettes without risk of cancer. He loved newspapers, and wrote many meaningful stories about real life. That's the reason for saying that he was better than Shakespeare, without any intention to offend the fans of the great writer of "The Tempest" The most prestigious person in Colombia' s newspapers, in addition to Gabo,, was Enrique Santos Montejo, from EL Tiempo, a great news paper in Bogota, and he signed with this pseudonym: "Caliban". Yes from the "Tempest" We can forgive "The Bard" because The New York Times was not yet available in his days. And last but not least, in Colombia we say "tocayos" when two persons have the same first name. Dwight was the first name of the great commander who won WW2. Many thanks for this article about books. Thank you for including our beloved Gabo.

Totally charming article. The quotes are very full of meaning and provoke thought. Oh to be such a careful reader and observer!