great modern works

a couple of my acquaintances graduated from a writing program with their MFAs in the past few months, and over the last week they have been at my house putting together their top 100 books of the past century list. this all started when one of them noted that top book lists tend to favor old classics. so the parameters for this new list were that it be a novel (no journals, collections, novellas, or autobiographies), and that the book was first published between 1905 and 2005. each person (of 4 graduates) would submit 25 titles. my head has been making my own list, in the meantime.

here it is, in order:

remembrance of things past - marcel proust
of human bondage - w somerset maugham
lolita - vladimir nabokov
the magus - john fowles
perfume - patrick suskind
le grand meaulnes - alain-fournier
iceland - jim krusoe
the horned man - james lasdun
blindness - jose saramago
wind-up bird chronicle - haruki murakami
revolutionary road - richard yates
1984 - george orwell
christmas holiday - w somerset maugham
the maimed - hermann ungar
the favorite game - leonard cohen
never let me go - kazuo ishiguro
hardboiled wonderland and the end of the world - haruki murakami
nausea - jean paul sartre
the unbearable lightness of being - milan kundera
number 9 dream - david mitchell
the bell jar - sylvia plath
the rachel papers - martin amis
the trial - franz kafka
endless love - scott spencer
jernigan - david gates



had i been allowed to include books newer than 2005, and older than 1905, these 5 would've been included near the top:

the sorrows of young werther - johann wolfgang von goethe
crime and punishment - fyodor dostoevsky
open curtain - brian evenson
samedi the deafness - jesse ball
remainder - tom mccarthy

Fowles

I have just stumbled upon two of the great excitements of life simultaneously.

One of those is to begin to consume a great piece of art. I remember this distinct feeling about 15 minutes into Adaptation, sitting in the theater however many years ago that was. During the montage where Nic Cage is talking about how life came to be and there are these quick colorful cuts and sounds. Or when I was 21 and playing the cd "Slide" by Lisa Germano for the first time. In that first chorus of the first song when the harmonies come in, on "Way Below the Radio." I was supposed to be packing up my things and moving, I had a Uhaul. But I sat in my room and listened to the whole album first. Or to be slightly mundane, the first time i tried this chocolate lava cake at Rain, a sushi restaurant in Seattle. Something about the warm temperature of the sponge cake. The important thing being that there are only certain types of happiness that last long enough that we can process our own happiness. And with a song or film, we have to trust that piece of art enough to know even at the beginning that we will still love it when it is over.

The other is when this piece of work that has made us feel like this is only one of many by the artist. All of a sudden, Nick Drake exists for me and there is not one, but 3 albums (and a collection of rarities). All of a sudden, there is this band called Magnetic Fields and they put out an album with not ten but sixty-nine songs on it with the best lyrics ever. All of a sudden, I am assigned to read a book called "Swann's Way" in a literature course at college, and it is only the first of seven volumes of the greatest book ever.

And I cannot even remember what led me to the book of the present moment, The Magus by John Fowles. I think it might have been when I was looking up information about author Jesse Ball, perhaps he recommended it. However it happened, I was smart enough to order it from the library. I had never heard of Fowles before for some reason, but by the 30th page I already knew it was one of the greatest books ever, at least for me. The Magus being only one of many long novels by Fowles.

It seems fitting to me that the first time I was really aware of this excitement about a piece of art was in the theater watching Adaptation. When as an adult I realized that there are few things better than having someone create something beautiful, and knowing that you are able to process it in the way they had hoped. And that Adaptation is all about hunting for precious orchids. I sound poetic and silly, I know, but I'm excited about the months of Fowles reading that I have ahead of me.

bulletproof

these soft but bulletproof pieces of clothing
that we started wearing
first as something different
and when i would dance in the kitchen
i would knock my fist firmly over my heart
and you would laugh while reading.

you have built up quietness
so that it is something i do not fear
like i have brought tears into your house
while you would have brought none.

i think that, hands clasped, faces forward
we must appear as two parts in collusion
two faces laughing from a row of chairs
or two sets of diligent silverware.
but to me you are a moon and i am
the shadow making the edge of it
look gray.

outside it is two slight bulletproof bodies
but here inside it is combative whispers
and my words are wet and warm and many
but you can always puncture them
with something that makes more sense,
you can compose the blankest sounding sentences.

i think i wanted to be more a part of you than this
but my shoulders are heavy just thinking
of the tautness and the rubber unbreakableness
of that one ribbon
and i already showed myself to be foolish
and i do not want to elaborate upon that.

we will not love my way, then.