Best of 2011

• Best novel: The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break by Steven Sherrill. (Actually published in 2001, I believe, but what a wonderful story. The minotaur of Greek mythology is alive and lonely in the American South, living in a small trailer park (where he likes to work on cars in his spare time) and working at a restaurant (where the manager has the brilliant idea of taking M.—as everyone calls him—out of the kitchen to carve prime rib for customers in the dining area). There is plenty here to make a grotesque southern gothic novel—a half man half bull protagonist; a hirsute woman; a gay civil war re-enactor; a jealous weightlifting husband of an underdressed, attractive, and flirtatious neighbor; a dead dog; aimless young men looking for a fight—but what’s amazing about this book is its tone and tempo: a calm and somewhat bemused loneliness even as various threats loom ahead.)

• Biggest book read: A Moment in the Sun by John Sayles (968 pages).

• Best book of poetry: At Lake Scugog by Troy Jollimore. (How did this book not get more attention? I just assumed it would be up for the National Book Award and a Pulitzer and so on. This guy has as big a brain as anyone else writing poetry today. A professor of philosophy, he writes formal, funny, musical poems that engage rather than intimidate the reader.)

• Favorite new cookbook: Trout Caviar: Recipes From a Northern Forager by Brett Laidlaw. (Laidlaw wrote a couple of interesting novels back in the 80s and 90s. Though they were realistic stories set in the Midwest, their Berrymanesque circumlocutions flew in the face of the plain-spoken minimalism that was au courant at the time. When I met him and mentioned the novels, he seemed genuinely surprised that anyone read and remembered them. Now, without warning, and nearly 20 years after his last book of fiction, a cookbook full of hearty recipes and good, clear writing.)

• Best New Yorker Article: “Dr. Don” by Peter Hessler in the September 26 issue. This profile of a small-town pharmacist in Western Colorado is like McPhee at his best.

• Favorite new band: Avett Brothers.

• Favorite new solo artist: Sharon Van Etten.

• Single of the year: “Miss K” by Dear Tick.

• Best movie: Bill Cunningham NYC.

• Best television series on DVD: Slings & Arrows. (Three seasons of a Canadian series about the goings-on behind the scenes at a Stratford-on-Avon type theater. Wonderfully combines Shakespeare, humor, and poignant drama. I actually watched these at the end of 2010, but certainly haven’t seen anything better since then.)

• Best online video: Ultimate Dog Tease.

• Favorite new restaurant: Cajun Potluck in Shoreview, MN.

• Favorite spice: prosciutto.

• Favorite new breakfast food: smoothies.

• Most awesome national landmark visited this year: Crater Lake in Oregon.

• Biggest fish caught: A twelve-inch brown trout in Hay Creek.

• Prettiest fish caught: A couple small brookies in the Poplar River.

• States I attempted to catch trout in this summer: Minnesota, Iowa, Oregon, and California.

• States I was skunked in: 0.

Please note: "New" means new to me; "best" means favorite; "favorite" is self-explanatory.

List of the Day (Courtesy of Izzy, age 7)

Three Novels I Did Not Finish Reading in 2010

• The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. by Robert Coover

• Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris

• The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski

The Complete List of Subjects Treated in the "Partial List of Subjects Treated" in Garry Wills' Translation of Martial's Epigrams

Adult Homosexuality

Artifacts

Baldness

Banqueting

Body Odor

Cunnilingus

Debt Delinquency

Fellatio

Legacy Hunting

Marital Fidelity

Marital Infidelity

Misogyny

Pederasty

The Simple Life

Tributes to Emperors

Tributes to Friends

Tributes to the Dead

Wine

The Writing Profession

Best of the Backlist

The other day I was telling my friend, Jomama, who is a sales rep for a book publishing company, how much I thought of Dave Eggers' post-Katrina book Zeitoun. Ms. Mama had just been down in New Orleans on business, and she commented that many of the bookstores down there were still displaying the book prominently even though it was no longer a frontlist title. Since then I've been re-reading Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief, a book that I have loved since it was first published back in 1998, though I hadn't sat down to re-read it until now. Well, it stands up. It's an almost unbelievable story in many ways, and Orlean does a masterful job of telling it. Just because it's not brand new doesn't mean it's not worth reading.

I have also recently noticed that the window for comments on Facebook has shrunk to just a few hours. If people don't comment on a status update or a new photo in the first couple hours, they probably aren't going to. And that's too bad in a way. The update (if it isn't tied to the moment—and most aren't) doesn't really lose humor, poignancy, or validity half a day later. A year or two ago, such comments might have trickled in over the course of a few days, but now the conversation is over much more quickly. It seems to me even more of a loss when people post family or vacation photos. These things seem even less ephemeral, and yet the active comment window remains equally small.

All of which puts me in mind of something Quentin Tarentino said about his video store days. Customers would come in looking for recommendations, and film geek Tarentino would press whatever odd, obscure, great, foreign, or forgotten movie on them only to have them ask if it was new. His response: If you haven't seen it before, it's new to you.

In the spirit of Mr. Tarentino, I bring you the best of the Corvus backlist. The most recent of these is over half a year old, and the others were posted before 2010. They are the ones that have received the most visitors, but which many of you—if you are new to Corvus—may never have seen.

• The poetry of divorce

• The poetry of rocks

• Basketball and marinade

• Reviewing a review

Enjoy!

The Aesthetics of Gravity

Think of the pleasure boys take in falling,

the hours they devote to it: ko'd, shot

in the back, machine-gunned in the

gut; tackled, clotheslined, checked,

body-blocked, tripped; in slow motion

whenever possible; preferably

for an audience of friends or family;

dramatically, comically; into

pillows, hay, leaves, mud, snow—

any pile promising padding or a mess;

water, too: flips, splits, bellyflops,

can openers and cannonballs.

Some may argue that phylogeny

recapitulates ontogeny, that

they are reliving that initial fall

from grace themselves; others may

insist they somehow sense their

own mortality, and are preparing for

their future decline; but I am convinced—

watching my sons catapult and pirouette

through the invisible air, then replay

those all too brief moments of flight

again and again for friends—they are

enchanted by the aesthetics of gravity.

Icarus is their hero, not for his

Pyrrhic success or greedy heedlessness,

but for his most delightful failure.

—Dallas Crow

"The Aesthetics of Gravity" originally appeared in the Fall/Winter 2008 (Vol. 103, #3/4) issue of Poet Lore.

Top 5 Books That I Have Lent to Friends and Which Have Not Been Returned

1. White Noise by Don DeLillo. Just as Hemingway was the most influential American prose writer for much of the 20^th century, DeLillo has been the most influential novelist of the past two decades (at least among male writers), and by DeLillo I mean the DeLillo of White Noise. I lent this to a girlfriend in my early 20s. Lost it in the breakup. I still think of it as a contemporary novel even though Penguin has put it through nearly half a dozen cover changes since then.

2. The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean. One of my favorite works of literary journalism. I will be teaching it next year, so just picked up another copy, which has a pale, much less attractive cover than the rich blue of the advance reading copy of the hardcover edition I owned. Also, the trim size of that was slightly unusual if I remember correctly, and it looks like they’ve trimmed the bottom margins of the current paperback to make it a more orthodox size. Too bad.

3. The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford. Read this during fall semester of my freshman year in college in a class that was confirming my decision to be an English major. This seems like a book I would really like to re-read. I remember it as a revelation of what a novel could be, and it seems like it would be no less satisfying to read in mid-life.

4. Heft on Wheels: A Field Guide to Doing a 180 by Mike Magnuson. The only book on this list that I’ve read twice, and if I had it on hand I might start in on it again right now. Magnuson’s account of his love affair as a 255-lb., chain-smoking, heavy drinker with bicycling is profane and beautiful. This and Christopher McDougall’s Born to Run are two outstanding books about the compulsions of endurance athletes.

5. Feeding a Yen by Calvin Trillin. The only book on this list I haven’t read in its entirety. I lent it out before I could sit down and read it properly.

Sidewalk Manifesto

W's Heavy Rotation Playlist

(At Age 6 3/4)

• "Chain Gang" by Sam Cooke

• "African Night Flight" by David Bowie

• "Flash's Theme" by Queen

• "Iron Man" by Black Sabbath

• "Mr. Crowley" by Black Sabbath

• "Die With Honor" by Manowar

Top Five Seasons of 'The Wire'

1. the first season

2. the fourth season

3. the third season

4. the fifth season

5. the second season

Top Ten All Time Greatest Doo Wop Songs (at least based on how I’m feeling this week)

1. "The Great Pretender" by The Platters

2. "Duke of Earl" by Gene Chandler

3. "Under the Boardwalk" by The Drifters

4. "Blue Moon" by The Marcels

5. "In the Still of the Night" by The Five Satins

6. "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" by Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers

7. "The Book of Love" by The Monotones

8. "Come Go with Me" by The Del Vikings

9. "Runaround Sue" by Dion

10. "A Teenager in Love" by Dion and the Belmonts

Enough! Go Away!

It’s Friday afternoon, time to roll out a few pet peeves to brighten your weekend:

• People saying, “Have a good one!” This saying seemed to come out of nowhere when I was living in Colorado about a decade and half ago. I hated it then, and I hate it now. It’s so lazy and imprecise. If you’re going to wish others well, act like you care. Wish them a good day, a pleasant afternoon, a fun evening, a relaxing weekend, or whatever is appropriate. When you tell me to have a good one, I’m not convinced you know what time of day it is, and if I’ve been telling you anything about my plans, I don’t think you’ve been listening.

• Drivers not using their blinkers. It’s lazy, inconsiderate, and dangerous. Just use ‘em.

• The fact that you always hear annoying Dire Straits songs on the radio, like the unbearable “Money for Nothing” (hated it then, hate it now—from the stereotyping of the blue-collar narrator to Sting’s guest appearance) and “The Walk of Life,” but never the ones you want to hear, like “Sultans of Swing,” “Skateaway,” or “Romeo & Juliet.”

• The rampant use of the term “perfect storm.” Sebastian Junger wrote a fantastic book with that title about the deaths at sea of six commercial fisherman, and now any time multiple circumstances come together, it’s “a perfect storm.” If you even semi-regularly read newspapers and general interest magazines, or listen to public radio, you will find this phrase popping up all over the place. It’s become a common cliché in a very short time.

Best Books of the Year

Unlike the New York Times Book Review and other such publications’ year-end lists, which are so stodgy—including only books published in the most recent calendar year—my list is comprised of the best books I read in 2009 regardless of when they were published.

1. Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall. McDougall weaves a number of threads together in this engrossing work of journalism that looks at running injuries, ultramarathoning, the Tarahumara tribe of Mexico's Copper Canyon, and the evolution of humans. An unforgettable cast of characters makes this compelling, almost unbelievable reading. McDougall also takes on the sacred cows of the running world, while also returning us to the true childlike joy of running. This book was the closest thing to a religious text that I read this year. Thanks to the good folks at Micawber's for pointing me to this one.

2. Stoner by John Williams. This unfortunately titled novel was originally published in 1965, and it is that rare thing, a work of fiction set in academia that isn’t farcical. What makes it even rarer is that Williams doesn’t hit a wrong note in the entire thing. There isn’t a single word out of place. The protagonist of his sad, beautiful novel with the understated tempo of a Townes Van Zandt ballad is William Stoner, who, we are told in the first paragraph, "did not rise above the rank of assistant professor, and few students remembered him with any sharpness after they had taken his courses." Though he may lead a life of quiet desperation, he is a man of heart-breaking principle. More on this unforgettable book from Morris Dickstein and Steve Almond.

3. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. Originally published in 2002, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, this novel combines a sympathetic protagonist, Magical Realism, a global and historical scope, and a loving portrayal of that most beleaguered of cities—Detroit. The last chapters seemed to me to lack the imagination and brilliance of the first nine-tenths of the book, but there was so much in the first 400-plus pages that blew me away that I can't complain too much about the slight drop-off at the end.

4. Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams. This novel about a 19th century buffalo hunt in the mountains of Colorado echoes Heart of Darkness and Moby-Dick, yet—like Stoner—it manages to be gloriously understated. It is clear early on that nothing good can come of this expedition, and there is more than just a bit of Ahab's monomania in Miller, the leader of the hunt, but every step (and misstep) of the journey is worth watching. Originally published in 1960, this book is likely to gain a larger audience in coming years as major Hollywood players are signing on to bring it to the big screen.

5. A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean. I almost didn't include this one since it was a re-reading for me rather than the first time through, but it is so damn good. A beautifully-crafted work that is about nothing less than beauty itself, and how rare and brief it is. I was crying among strangers at 37,000 feet when I finished it.

Honorable Mention (because it's not a book): Pat Jordan’s beautiful short essay on aging from Men’s Journal.

Top 5 Will Oldham / Palace / Palace Brothers / Palace Music /Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy Albums

1. Viva Last Blues by Palace Music (1995)

2. Beware by Bonnie ‘Prince' Billy (2009)

3. Days in the Wake by Palace Brothers (1994)

4. Joya by Will Oldham (1997)

5. I See a Darkness by Bonnie ‘Prince' Billy (1999)

Honorable Mention: There Is No One What Will Take Care Of You by The Palace Brothers (1993)

A Few of Her Favorite Things

The smell of water. The smell of the back stacks of libraries. A good steak, medium rare. Growing garlic. Sleeping in late under a down comforter. Reading and rereading certain poems. Watching my dog run.

Name Game

Nothing whiles away the minutes like mischievously categorizing proper nouns!

A Cormac McCarthy List

A few years ago, I was contemplating teaching Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, but I felt like teenagers would find it boring. I could see them complaining and rolling their eyes almost unanimously. I love McCarthy and The Road, but let’s face it—most of the time not much happens. Page after page, the boy and his dad have variations of the same conversation and the same experiences. A colleague went ahead and taught it—and the kids have loved it! Many of them have raved about it to me.

I thought back on my original approach to teaching it the other day when she told me she had a student complaining that he didn’t understand what was going on in it. If this were an early McCarthy book, I would understand the complaint, but The Road? Every day is more or less the same, and every day the boy is going to ask the same questions, and the dad is going to deal with them in the same way. I’m intentionally making it sound boring or static, because the reasons I love McCarthy have nothing to do with plot. I love the way he uses words and makes sentences. In fact, when I read him, I underline all the words I don’t know and the phrases that blow me out of the water. The words he chooses are lyrical, archaic, earthy, rich. Here’s my list from The Road (with page numbers):

Gryke (11)
Collet (16)
Batboard (17)
Bulldrums (17)
Pipeclayed (18)
Breakfront (21)
Chifforobe (22)
Discalced (24)
Shoddy (as a noun, 28)
Creedless (28)
Feverland (28)
Firedrake (31)
Godspoke (32)
Disclets (38)
Mayapple (39)
Pipissewa (39)
Mastic (48)
Cheroot (56)
Advents (59)
Bracken (61)
Stakebed (61)
Rachitic (63)
Colliculus (64)
Temporal gyrus (64)
Siwash (68)
Truckgarden (68)
Billets (of wood, 70)
Claggy (75)
Skifts (76)
Quoits (76)
Cowled (77)
Catamites (92)
Sedge (94)
Kerfs (98)
Port cochere (105)
Sleavings (106)
Dentil (107)
Haspstaple (109)
Tang (as part of a shovel, 109)
Illucid (116)
Swag (123)
Duff (124)
Chert (129)
Coolingboard (130)
Cakebell (184)
Envacuuming (191)
Slagpools (192)
Lightwires (192)
Loggia (204)
Knurled (209)
Scud (as a noun, 221)
Seacrawl (221)
Isocline (222)
Davits (223)
Turnbuckles (223)
Mae west (uncapitalized, 225)
Gimbaled (230)
Bindle (230)
Pampooties (243)
Salitter (261)
Entabled (261)
Bollards (262)
Gantry (262)
Scarpbolts (271)
Bloomery (271)
Uncalendared (273)
Incinerate (as an adjective, 273)
Ensepulchred (273)
Crozzled (273)
Hagmoss (274)
Counterspectacle (274)
Hydroptic (274)
Wimpled (286)
Torsional (287)

Horse Sense

• horsing around / horseplay

• healthy as a horse

• so hungry I could eat a horse

• pee like a racehorse

• hung like a horse

• horse-trading

• changing horses in the middle of a stream

• straight from the horse's mouth

• a horse of a different color

• dark horse

• clothes horse

• beating a dead horse

• dog & pony show

• putting the cart before the horse

• horsepower

• back in the saddle again

• get right back on the horse that threw you

• feel like I've been rode hard and put up wet

Coffee Table Display

I’m long overdue for a list, so how about what’s on my living room coffee table. It feels like I am constantly trying to clear it off and organize it, so I can see the table, but then it grows misshapen layers of books and papers. Will a list give it some form, make this mess more acceptable in my sights?

• 20 books on top, including
5 books of poetry
2 kids books
2 photography books
2 books that were given to me
2 books for school
2 books on fly-fishing
1 library book
1 novel unfinished since spring break
1 borrowed book
4 bought secondhand
• 6 books underneath, including
a world atlas (permanent resident)
a book of poetry
3 books bought second-hand yesterday (1 for school and 1 on fly-fishing)
1 borrowed book that is long overdue
• 4 magazines on top
• 3 magazines underneath
• Also a box of tissues (Puffs with aloe vera), two coasters, various photocopies (on stretching and for school), clippings (recipes), my sunglasses, a calendar, and 40 or so pages of loose-leaf typed poems in neatly-stacked piles (more of which are also in orderly stacks on the floor next to the table).

Contronyms

Last year I wrote about a non-word, aibohphobia, that I thought should be a word. Now I’ve got a much more practical non-term that is deserving of word status. A contronym is a word that is it own opposite. I have also seen these words referred to as antagonyms, auto-antonyms, and Janus words. Wikipedia even traces the use of contronym back to 1962.

I become most vividly aware of these words while teaching the short story, “The Guest” by Albert Camus. Before the kids even read the story, I point out that it was originally written in French, and that the original title is “L’hote,” a word that means not only guest, but also host. It’s a fine opportunity to point out the decisions translators must make, but the contradiction in the title also reflects the paradoxes and reversals of the story. It seems to me a clear case of a writer using ambiguity deliberately to increase the complexity of his story.

Many kids blurt out that it’s stupid to have a word mean its opposite and see it as a shortcoming of the French language, but I point out that we have many words like this in English, words such as

bolt
bound
cleave
clip
enjoin
fast
grade
handicap
trim
weather.

A more complete list can be found at this site.

As a side note, it’s interesting to me how many of these mean to attach or cling in one form and to separate or move in their other form. Perhaps an etymologist could explain why that is.

Slang also takes advantage of contranyms. Bad can mean good as well as something negative, and my students these days are quick to use sick when talking about really impressive things. It also makes me wonder if there is a term for when you use two different words that seem to be opposites for the same purpose. For example, something really appealing can be cool or hot.