Good Reading From 2008

The following year-end list will be even more idiosyncratic than my preceding lists of favorite music from the year, largely because the vast majority of the books I read in 2008 were published years earlier. Not keeping up with contemporary fiction plays a large role in this, but so does a huge backlog of unread books from previous years. Still, here are a handful of books I thoroughly enjoyed and tentatively recommend (with some caveats) - a nice sampling of what I came across this past year.

Reporting Vietnam: American Journalism, 1959-1975
This two-volume, 1,700 page collection of journalism relating to the Vietnam war has been sitting on my shelves for almost ten years, having moved with me from Wisconsin to New York and California. I dipped into it previously, and read Michael Herr's Dispatches (included in its entirety here) for a senior college literature course, but it wasn't until Year 5 of the ongoing Second Gulf War that I sat down to devour the entire collection. This is an intelligently compiled, wide-ranging and important work. I learned much from my readings - not only of American atrocities abroad (Daniel Lang's lengthy New Yorker piece "Casualties of War" from 1969 on the rape, murder and cover-up of civilian deaths) and at home (the construction-worker led rampage against protesters in downtown New York in May 1970, of which I'd never once heard anything about), but of sustained and credible objections to the escalating campaign and muddled approach- objections raised far earlier in the war than the fables of 1968 would suggest. And to hear a young marine earnestly tell a reporter he'd rather fight the communists in Saigon than in San Diego is to witness ignored history lessons rearing their ugly heads once again.

Carl Wilson, Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste
Continuum's charming 33 1/3 series of short, smartly-penned analysis of landmark popular music albums has several volumes of interest, but by the far the most interesting and unique is Canadian writer Carl Wilson's look at the music of Celine Dion and her rather inexplicable popularity. By tackling an entertainer who is both one of the most reviled and most popular artists on the planet, Wilson is forced to write less about the album in question and more about definitions of aesthetics. In essence, this is an investigation into the concept of "taste," both good and bad. One need have no interest in Dion's music to appreciate Wilson's venture.

Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso
Years ago, a college professor (far from the top of my list of favorites) repeatedly referred to Orlando Furioso as the greatest epic poem of all time, and while I've forgotten most of everything else he tried to teach me about Beowulf and Chaucer, I've never forgotten this blurb. And so, finally, I got around to investigating just what could be so fantastic about a 46 canto chivalric Italian legend from 1532. And while the prose translation by Guido Waldman could be improved upon, I think I get it now. This is rich, juicy stuff, loaded with fun, stuffed with action, dripping with romance, bursting with sex, and filled with incredible deeds of battle, swordsmanship and monsters - a blockbuster from an age when the medieval mindset was giving way to the Renaissance. I'm a little ashamed to admit that one of my favorite moments (or guiltiest of pleasures) among the 600+ pages is the recounting of an impotent dwarf's useless attempts to ravish a swooning maiden - a section, I later discovered, long left untranslated by the poem's several Victorian-era English interpreters.

John R. MacArthur, You Can't Be President: The Outrageous Barriers to Democracy in America
Journalist, author and publisher John MacArthur takes a welcome realist approach to dismantling the myth of American democracy. A major part of the book looks at the restrictions placed on presidential candidates and the inability for any true "outsider" to ascend the throne (his examples of how political parties will willingly sacrifice their own gains to prevent independents from succeeding is quite convincing), but he also concerns himself with less obvious examples of thwarted democracy - from the lack of engagement in local elections to an investigation of Chicago corruption. MacArthur attacks both parties at will - he spends pages comparing George W. Bush's wartime suppression of civil liberties to Woodrow Wilson's often-glossed-over brutal approach to stifling dissent and spreading fear through the installation of the Palmer Raids and the 1917 Espionage Act. But he also details the moral rot at the heart of the Bill and Hillary Clinton political machine, detailing their prominent role in destroying Howard Dean in the early days of the 2004 election, so as to keep 2008 open for Hillary's own run for office. This is, in many ways, a dispiriting read, but it's easily one of the more astute looks at the sorry state of American politics to be released in some time.

Bernd Brunner, Bears: A Brief History
Brief indeed, and pocket-sized - this wonderful little book, filled with vintage illustrations, comes from Germany and sets about exploring the complicated and often sad relationship between bears and humans. Brunner's central thesis is that a bear's ability to stand on their hind legs - that is, their ability to look like humans - is both what draws humans to them (as in teddy bears and wise old bears and the like) and leads us to exploit and harm them. There's little in the way of narrative and much in the way of gentle exploration, both of primary sources and Brunner's own thoughtful ideas. A novel approach to understanding human-animal relations.

Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century
An excellent guide to the upheavals in classical music in the age of modernism and beyond, written with knowledge, wit and narrative strength. For those unsure of the many directions music took in the last century, Ross offers a strong overview that offers a balance between popular history and musical analysis. He details the life stories and interactions of the various composers in a way that brings drama to their lives, and he gives non-classical innovations their due, as well. He celebrates Benjamin Britten, clucks at Theodor Adorno, and places Thomas Mann's Doctor Faust center stage.

Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys
In the time that has elapsed between when I bought this book (years ago - are we sensing a pattern here?) and when I finally got around to reading it, Oates's novel had been enshrined as yet another Oprah Book Club selection. This means different things to different people - badge of honor or scarlet letter - but Joyce Carol Oates herself means different things to different people. It's foolish to try and get a handle on her entire output (over fifty volumes of fiction alone), but I've enjoyed every novel of hers I've read, even if I'm also beginning to sense the limitations of her craft and, especially, themes. Still, this is a solid work, exploring the now-familiar ground of troubled childhoods and wronged young girls. But when the result is something as effective, disturbing and well-crafted as this, who's to say Oates should move on to other subjects?

David E. James, The Most Typical Avant-Garde: History and Geography of Minor Cinemas in Los Angeles
Hard to find, expensive, dense and by definition limited in appeal, this was nevertheless one of the more insightful and brilliant works I read over the past year. Honing in on Los Angeles as a key player in the creation and dissemination of avant-garde and outsider cinema, James carefully investigates any number of tangential cinematic worlds and genres. From early silent fantasies and labor-sponsored short films to the full-fledged experimentation of Maya Deren and Kenneth Anger, he forcefully insists on considering Los Angeles cinema as something apart from and other than Hollywood cinema. This is pretty much for specialists, but I found it eye-opening and unique. For anybody curious as to how art can function or flourish in the shadow of industry, look no further.

In Memoriam:
David Foster Wallace (1962-2008)
Harold Pinter (1930-2008)
Alain Robbe-Grillet (1922-2008)
Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008)
Studs Terkel (1912-2008)