Waste by Eugene Marten: if i hadn't finished Infinite Jest at the tiniest beginning of this year, Waste would be my favorite book read in 2011. it's a small book but there's nothing of smallness in it: Sloper is unique in his lostness and living; the sentences are as well crafted and surprising as any; the world is as large, dark, perverted, and somehow gentle as anyone could want.
The Second Book of the Tao by Stephen Mitchell: reading Mitchell's mind on the page is like letting someone wipe your mirror clean. you forget you are anyone at all. and what a thing to be grateful for, to not be anyone for some time of each day.
About a Mountain by John D'Agata: written in a fever of historical, linguistic, and personal chaos of hilarity. a memoir that doesn't feel like one, finally.
Players by Don Dellilo: the empty dialogue, the boredom of days, the need to be someone in a vast cityscape of someones, the relentless oppressive hemmed-in-living of city life and the prose, which seems lost in his later work. there's a doomed feeling here, but not of great circumstance or terrible violence: the doom here is quiet and unrelenting and relishes boredom. these players aren't distant or detached, they're too unaware that this is a possibility, that they might look at their lives and see what they really are: unfeeling to anyone other than themselves. it's beautifully, sadly done.
these are my favorites of the year so far. other mentionables, which i may hit later. the ones i'm looking forward to: Us by Michael Kimball, another early Dellilo, Butler's There is No Year, and some of Dogen's Zen essays.
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