mutterings

Last ten books I read in 2010:

Divisadero - Michael Ondaatje
Inside Madeleine - Paula Bomer
Angels on Toast - Dawn Powell
A Time to Be Born - Dawn Powell
Ray - Barry Hannah
Behindlings - Nicola Barker
Gold - Dan Rhodes
Timoleon Vieta Come Home - Dan Rhodes
The Optimist's Daughter - Eudora Welty
Julian - Gore Vidal

Last ten books of 2000:

The Loved One - Evelyn Waugh
Myra Breckinridge - Gore Vidal
Scoop - Evelyn Waugh
On the Black Hill - Bruce Chatwin
Moon Palace - Paul Auster
The Poor Mouth - Flann O'Brien
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson
Flame Angels, an anothology of Irish writing
The Snapper - Roddy Doyle
What Am I Doing Here? - Bruce Chatwin

Have my tastes changed over ten years? There are no women on the 2000 list, though I'd been reading Grace Paley and Jeanette Winterson before I got into Waugh. (I read three Grace Paley stories this morning, in fact - sometimes you need help in the morning.) Half the 2010 books were written by women, and three of them I'd read before. All of the 2000 books I was reading for the first time, I think - except for Myra Breckinridge. I used to like that book. Not much of the Waugh sticks with me. I do remember, however, taking a piss in Linda's Tavern in Seattle earlier that year - 2000 - and reading "I'm currently making my way through Waugh" scrawled next to the urinal, and I thought, Yeah, I guess it's about time I got around to that too. So that explains that. I can't deal with Paul Auster anymore, though I loved him at the time. Flann O'Brien is forever. Fear and Loathing - not much to say there, though it made me laugh. That's important. I lost the Snapper years ago. I still have all of Chatwin's books. Wouldn't want to get rid of them even if I'll never read them again because they're good and strange and you never know. I doubt I'll read On the Black Hill ever again. But I love The Viceroy of Ouidah. Is there anything else quite like it? Utz is like that too.

I saw this girl reading Julian on the subway about a week after I'd read it and wanted to talk to her but didn't. I wanted to tell her I'd just read the same book, but in English. It was like we were related. We were different from the other people on the subway. Both of us had been spending time in the 4th century among fanatical Christians, mad Romans, and cyncial Asiatic philosophers. I mean it's not like we were reading Harry Potter or something. You see people reading Harry Potter on the subway all the time. But Julian? No. We were connected. But it was enough just to feel the connection, I guess. I didn't say anything. I wouldn't. (In Madrid, by the way, people actually look at each other on the subway. Sometimes they stare right at you. I find it a little disturbing. You can talk to them. Madrid is not London. But I am not from Madrid. Not from London either.)

Eight of the 2010 books I would describe as funny. You have to be a pretty astonishing writer, I think, or at least have something pretty weird going on, for me to read and like your book even if you're almost never funny. Michael Ondaatje is like that. I wasn't crazy about The Optimist's Daughter though - I wish I had been, but I wasn't. Also, I was reading it in the waiting room of the Oncology ward, which probably doomed it. Writers don't have any control over where their books are read. You kill little pieces of yourself writing something, churning your brains apart, burning holes through your actual memories so that you can't say for sure what's happened in your life and what you made up for someone else's life, the life of some person who doesn't exist, and then some guy goes and reads your book in the Oncology Ward of a large Spanish hospital.

I read Inside Madeleine on my computer. Somebody should publish it so I can read it off of my computer. I've written about it before. It's one of those books that makes me want to write. It put an energy into my blood, woke me up a little, shook me out of my dream, scared me into the world - made me feel younger, kinder, readier. Maybe a little dizzy at times. In other words, it surprised me. Dan Rhodes does something like that for me too. And Nicola Barker? If you haven't read Darkmans...

Sometimes I pick up Ray and read a page or two. I just grab it and hold it in front of my face. Thirty seconds, a minute. Ten sentences, a page or two. Then I put it somewhere. A week later I grab it again. Sometimes I take it into the bathroom with me and read it on the toilet. It's a book that can go anywhere, so there is no danger of interference from the toilet. Nothing is shocking to that book. It's also another of those rare books that rejuvenates. Actually makes me feel healthier, livelier, even smarter for letting its weird voices into my head, for running my brain on its frequencies. I can't see how I'll ever tire of it. Then again, I might have felt the same about Auster at one time. I don't know. I think my tastes were more volatile ten years ago. A little more all over the place. Now I know what I like. Which isn't to say I'm shutting myself off here and there. No. I'm still ready for whatever the hell there is.