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Feb
10
The Bare Necessities—Jonathan Evison (WEST OF HERE)
2011 at 5am Posted by Rebecca Joines Schinsky
The Bare Necessities is a series in which authors and book industry professionals share annotated reading lists of books they love.
Jonathan Evison is the author of two novels, All About Lulu and the much-anticipated West of Here, out this month from Algonquin Books.
When I look at this list, I feel like a big fat white male chauvinist pig, because it’s all a bunch of dead white guys. But what can I say? I’m gonna’ be a dead white guy someday. These are some of the books that shaped me into the big fat dying white male chauvinist pig I’m suddenly afraid I might be. Sorry for that. But these are good books, I promise, listed in no particular order.
McTeague – Frank Norris
There is a gorgeous brutality to Norris’s prose which is perfectly harmonious with the brutality of his tale. Norris dresses down language like he dresses down humanity, unsentimentally. At his best, his sentences can pulverize language like bones into dust. Even when they’re riddled with passive forms, his sentences are never static; they’re alive, because Norris knows how to move them. Why? Because Norris is not a sentence writer. Norris is a natural story-teller. He’s decisive. He knows exactly what he’s trying to say. He knows when to linger and when to pass. He knows how tho make his exposition serve him. He knows how to choose his details, and makes his choices seem inevitable. And above all, he knows how to build and indestructible scene — and lordy, some of the scenes in McTeague, from the cue-ball scene to the epic finale in Death Valley, are seriously unforgettable.
Ask the Dust – John Fante
Ask the Dust virtually cemented my status as a hopelessly young alcoholic misfit, determined to starve himself in the name of literature. When I first read AtD at eighteen, Arturo Bandini was the most fully realized, unfettered, intensely human character to ever tear my heart out and kick it down the stairs. Bandini was fear and arrogance, outrage and tenderness, lust and greed and vulnerability. Bandini was a character ever at odds with himself, forever beholden to his own yearnings and passions and desperate desire to be loved.
Trout Fishing in America – Richard Brautigan
Clever bugs me. Even Vonnegut, who I hold dear to my heart, can get on my nerves when he can’t resist his own cleverness. Tom Robbins gives me fits. But Brautigan is different. The dude couldn’t help it. The guy was truly an original. It didn’t feel like he was showing off. What I love most about RB is that beneath his goofy sensibility and stoned wit lies a clear-eyed moral vision that reminds me of Whitman. Also, TFiA is entirely its own world, and very few books can say that.
Our Mutual Friend – Charles Dickens
In spite of what stodgy old Henry James had to say in his scathing review upon the release of OMF, it just may be my favorite Dickens novel. OMF finds Dickens at the top of his game, both as a storyteller and a wordsmith. While darker than any of his other works (with the exception of Bleak House), it may also be his funniest. For my money, Silas Wegg is one of the greatest comic inventions in all of literature. I’m guessing OMF was also among Evelyn Waugh’s favorite Dickens novels, as he pays it a roundabout homage in A Handful of Dust.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
Hemingroids said American Literature all boiled down to this book. That’s a bit reductive, maybe, but I’ll say this: Twain is the American Dickens. The wit, the pathos, the moral compass. And like Dickens, the dude was an enchanter. One can’t help but surrender to Twain’s charm. TAoHF is one of the funniest most irresistible narratives I’ve ever read, and it still feels fresh today.
Moby Dick – Herman Melville
Truth be told, Melville’s shorter novels (most notably Benito Cereno) find him at the top of his game craft-wise, but Moby Dick is something else. Moby Dick is unfettered genius, furious, unhinged, and at times frustrating. MD is a work which can barely contain the force of its own invention. Melville throws everything but the kitchen sink into Moby Dick, every mode you can think of—essay, narrative poetry, you name it. The Modernists owe a big debt to Melville in terms of narrative invention.
Barabbas – Per Lagerkvist
Damn, I wish I’d thought of this. What could be ten times more compelling than the life of Jesus Christ? How about the life of the guy who was acquitted so Jesus Christ could live? Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. The Bible gives Barabbas one or two lines, Lagerkvist gives him a novel. This book is genius. Don’t ever see the film with Anthony Quinn, though.
Call of the Wild – Jack London
I re-read this book once a year by campfire, and it gives me chills every time. Can’t wait to read it to my boy. CotW speaks to the wilderness of the spirit like no other. London was a master story-teller. Period. The dude understood what makes the heart of a story beat. Sometimes the language is a little corny, but the action is always totally convincing, and the themes resonate in the bones instead of the brain, which is as good as it gets.
I Served the King of England – Bohumil Hrabal
Though widely considered a masterpiece throughout Europe, Hrabal’s hilarious, sensual, and unforgettable portrait of Nazi-occupied Prague through the eyes of a Quixotic young waiter is–in my humble estimation–vastly underexposed stateside. Anyone who has ever worked in the food service or hospitality industry, must read this book, which was released in 1971 by Petlice, an underground anti-communist press in Prague, and not published in America until 1990. Hrabal was a bigger-than-life (though highly accessible) figure in Czechoslovakia, where he died at the age of 83, falling from a fifth-story hospital window while trying to feed pigeons. I rate Hrabal very high on my list of people I wish I could’ve had a few beers with before they fell out of windows–right alongside Chet Baker.
Related posts:
I really want to read Trout Fishing in American now
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Rebecca Schinsky, Rebecca Schinsky. Rebecca Schinsky said: The Bare Necessities—Jonathan Evison (WEST OF HERE) http://su.pr/2GfDSU [...]
“I’m gonna be a dead white guy some day” LOL!
Fun to peruse Jonathan’s list … I’m reading WEST OF HERE now …
Dawn – She Is Too Fond of Books´s last [type] ..Don’t mess with my milkshake!