A year in reading: Jeremy Gordon

I have long made lists of my favorite cultural artefacts of the year – as a university blogger who slams the films to a readership with a figure, as an elector of Fitch Forg Fred Thomas“The cops do not care about PT.” For the list of the best of the 2010s. (Mission: unsuccessful.) A few years ago, I decided to consolidate everything – books, music, films, video games, professional struggle matches, in particular good memes, exceptional parts, etc. – in a single main list entitled “Culture consumed by Tkyear”, organized chronologically. The list is a tidy reminder of one of the main pleasures of my life: Take it all. I like Chinese cuisine and Italian cuisine; I appreciate the novels and the beat of Oregon in the Bowl pink of my university football video game; I like the country And Hip-hop. My main goal is really to put my defenses and accept what happens to me. My first novel, See friendshipwas released in March, and it’s a strange moment to promote yourself. The most pleasant work continues to take it and bounce all this.

The first book I finished this year was Anne Serre‘s BeginnersContinuing a resolution that I made in 2022 to stop reading the authors in English. It was a temporary detour, born from exhaustion with English selfishness; Basically, I was tired of hearing people who went to Harvard and Yale. (Except for my friends, who are wonderful.) Often, what I want most by reading is to be shaken in another person’s brain – not to create empathy, but escape my own bullshit for a while. Sometimes it requires leaving the country. Since then, I have returned to America and England, but I have always had a lot of time for translated works and the stunned and obsessive interiority of greenhouse characters is a reliable pleasure. The other books I enjoyed were Clara Drummond‘s Role -playingan uncompromising excursion through the carnal excesses of Brazilian high society; Antonio Tabucchi‘s For Isabel: a mandalain which the search for a disappeared Portuguese dissident transcends time and space; And Karla Suarez‘s Havana year zeroA disarming, sexy and slightly winding novel (so -called positively) on reconstructing a mystery in order to improve your life and fail.

Speaking of leaving the country: earlier this year, my wife and I spent 10 days to visit a family in Amsterdam. My book of choice, read in many cafes overlooking the canals, was Gary Indiana‘s Do everything in darknessA fictitious coda for his city in New York before 11/11. The book is terribly moving and quite cynical about artistic life, but I was struck by the insistence of Indiana, in the preface, that it would not write it today: “The world is hardly a better place than it was at that time, but I think it is possible that I am a better person now than the person who wrote this novel.” Words to live. I remember many other books where I was when I read them: taking Adania Shibli‘s Minor detail During a solo dinner of Ramen and Saké at the coldest night of the year; reading exclusively Thomas Bernhard‘s The loser On a walking cushion, I replace a real exercise; ignore my friend’s texts to go out because I was too absorbed by Jackie Ess‘s DarrylThe funniest book I have read this year, when I torn a giant Pit of Spicy Rigatoni (also a solo dinner); Open my friend Megan Nolan‘s Ordinary human failures In bed, just after returning from his launch party; finishing Tony Tulathimutte‘s Rejection During hours of waiting for a new identity document in an unlit registration center in New York. Later, I would discover that I would have badly read the instructions and that I would be in the wrong office – a literally Kafka-Sque the misunderstanding of my own manufacturing.

In this sense, the great Percival Everett said he is more interested in places than by experiences: “You always add an element to a story once you have located it somewhere.” Everett is the author I have consumed the most, this year: I link Erase And TreesThe two for the second time, the two masterpieces; wildly grossy at I am not Sidney POIVER and grove completely to A story of the African-American people (proposed) by Strom Thurmond, as indicated to Percival Everett and James Kincaid; and was overwhelmed by Jacqueswhich deserves each price and sale and more. Much of this Everett immersion was the preparation of an interview that I am not too embarrassed to reveal did not go well – my fault, not his. It’s ridiculous to ask the authors of Explain their work anyway; Our back and forth has had the structure of a person (me) says something that may be true, and the other person (Everett) says “yes”. It was illegible as a reading experience, so why I never deposited the play; As a personal experience, it was extremely instructive to remember that I don’t necessarily need to approach or understand the source of what I deeply admire.

Jacques was the best new book I read in 2024. The best book I have read, period, was Susie Boyt‘s Loved and missedA perfectly calibrated emotional whirlwind that made me cry, a reaction that I have since transmitted to several friends. The second best book I read was Bret Easton Ellis‘s The shardsA mystery of hypnotic autofictional murder with a playlist of all time. I have never been a big fan of Ellis’ work but I was very affected by him, an excellent reminder that we can always be surprised. The best of the rest: the reissue of Robert Plunket‘s Love JunkieThe second most fun book I have read this year; And Bette Howland‘s Things to come and to comeBought directly from the publisher of an independent press fair, which I particularly loved as a native Chicago who always appreciates learning how the city was different before my birth, and yet also the same.

Regarding things being different but also the same: I spent a lot of time this year thinking of America as an imperial project, a public body, a holistic embarrassment, an occasional source of pride. One afternoon, I picked up a second-hand copy of Greil Marcus‘s Mystery trainAnd has felt several beliefs for a long time start to Baratter and move – a by -product of the best artistic criticism. The conception of Marcus America as a strange and woolly country made of myths that overlap and folk arts made to scratch have unlocked a different set of ideas on my homeland: namely that it is too strange and mystical place to govern by reason alone. (By coincidence, Marcus also predicted that Donald Trump would gain a re -election.) And the novel I read now, which can take me at the end of the year, is Edward P. Jones’s The known worldAnother big book on America and its tragic delusions. It looks like an appropriate companion for this dark fall season, that I and many people I know have a day at a time, just like alcoholics.

More than a year in 2024 reading