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Thursday, May 29, 2008

Summer Reading

Posted by Marc Bousquet on 05/29/08 at 02:42 PM

cross-posted from howtheuniversityworks.com

My department just circulated its annual call for summer reading suggestions. I have long promised an “academic labor bookshelf” series of entries, and will probably deliver on that in a few weeks.

In the meanwhile, moderately lighter fare. My three suggestions for summer fiction:

Chris Bachelder, US! (2006). hilarious, relevant political novel based on the conceit that Upton Sinclair (The Jungle, Oil!) is serially resurrected (and serially assassinated).

Thomas King, Green Grass, Running Water. (1993). Hilarious, brilliant, irreverent, captivating. My favorite North American novel of the past thirty years. On this list, these may be fighting words, but in my view it’s possibly the most readable piece of postmodern historiographic metafiction ever written. So full of ideas, so full of references, and all handled deftly, with incisive wit and a light touch.

Upton Sinclair, Oil! (1927). The very loose inspiration of There Might Be Blood, which was really an adaptation of Moby Dick--Daniel Day Lewis stumping about the quarter-deck for 3 hours. Oil! is utterly unlike the movie in mood, plot and characterization. It’s astonishingly like a Dickens novel if Dickens also had the range, virtues and politics of Jack London. Great youth characters, enduringly relevant conflicts and themes. (I realize that this capsule description probably also represents fighting words for some!)

Comments

I remember Upton Sinclair veering wildly between absolute bathetic hackery and moments of surprisingly moving passages. But perhaps _Oil_ would be worth a look again.

To continue somewhat in the Sinclair vein, my friend has just recommended to me Ruth Ozeki’s _My Year of Meats_ as a very funny look at gender and transnationalism and, of course, food, as it follows a woman filming for a reality tv show encouraging the Japanese to eat more beef. The food industry and Wal-Mart come in for some satire.

Anyways, that’ll be on my booklist this summer if I can ever get more caught up on things.

By Sisyphus on 05/29/08 at 08:08 PM | Permanent link to this comment

I’ve been making my lists for exams this week, and both the King and the Lewis are on there. Bachelder’s not, but maybe he should be. His Bear v. Shark is criminally underappreciated—if it hadn’t come out a month after 9/11 I think it would have received a lot more attention…

By G C on 05/29/08 at 10:49 PM | Permanent link to this comment

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Thursday, May 29, 2008

Summer Reading

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