If you like this, you are wrong

I don't think I'm going to bother commenting much on, and I'm certainly not going to link to, Anis Shivani's dumbass list of overrated writers on Huffingtonpost. Oh, I am not a fan of every writer on that list, to be sure. But the notion that my admiration for Lydia Davis or Marilynne Robinson, who have written some of the most brilliant, moving, and inimitably human books I have ever read, is little more than the result of having been told once by a college professor that they are good, or that their writing is "easy enough to copy," as opposed to actually having read them and enjoyed them multiple times myself, is depressingly stupid. This is the worst kind of argument there is--the kind where somebody doesn't understand something and is so utterly narcissistic and insecure that he can't allow the possibility that others might understand it better. And so he invents an explanation that renders his ignorance virtuous and others' understanding fatuous. He sounds like a guy who was just denied tenure.

If you want to criticize a writer, go right ahead. But just for once, could we have a critical debate that doesn't involve declaring opposing viewpoints morally bankrupt? Can I please like John Ashbery without being labeled a pompous, self-deceiving ivory-tower snob? Can I please be permitted the courtesy of knowing my own personal motivations, instead of having them dictated to me by some dude on the internet? It's a shame, because some of Shivani's actual literary analysis of some of his overrated writers is in fact quite good. I wish he could have just said what he thought without first having to invalidate what I think, based upon my status as a college professor in an MFA program.

At least he deserves congratulations for one thing--creating the first top-whatever literary list in years with more women on it than men. Sweet!

Oh--wait.

Books of Lists of Stuff

I do not like chain bookstores. And let me say that I will not even consider pulling that punch, even though most of my own book sales probably came from chain stores (listen to me with the past tense!), even though chain stores can positively serve communities that otherwise wouldn't have bookstores. All that notwithstanding, they suck. I hate the dumbass uninformed booksellers, and the fussy little middle-class-friendly music section, and the DVD's, and the blended coffee drinks and plastic-wrapped pastries and pseudohipsters with laptops and cellphone yammerers and corporate-approved soundtracks. So okay, that's out of the way.

However! I like the remainders. Except when they're by me. And the other day I was walking past B*****s in the mall after buying six $1.29 12-volt VU meter lamps at Rat Shack, and I saw, on the dump bin outside the door, a heavily discounted copy of The Illustrated Directory of Guitars, a giant hardcover book that is really quite awful, full of typos, technical errors, and hideous lapses in taste, but which nonetheless I devoured last night instead of continuing to read a certain National-Book-Award nominated September 11th novel that I nearly threw across the room because one of the female characters was so obnoxiously shallow and cliched and generally phoned-in by the windswept chiseled-jaw author.

Anyway, what this guitar book is, is 480 pages of full color photographs of guitars. That's it! I have others like it, actually. I also have a (quite wonderfully written actually) synthesizer equivalent--The A to Z of Analog Synthesizers, in two volumes, by Peter Forrest. It's just a list: a big, long list. If you hang around in the oversize remainder section of a chain bookstore, you will find books of lists of airplanes, military weapons, cars, cats, china, jewelry, what have you--just hot hobby porno action for anyone and everyone.

Allow me to say that these books are freaking great. Even when they are terrible. There is something about the loving taxonomization of objects, accompanied by full color photographs, that just pushes my buttons. The world is full of interesting things! And here you go, take a gander at them! In my own case, I wish there was one filled with microphones, and one with reel to reel tape machines, and another filled with vintage computers, and hi-fi receivers from the seventies, and obscure insects, and different kinds of chairs. Also I would not mind a big thick book filled with hundreds of artist's renderings of extinct huge mammals. Mastodons aren't the half of it--man, these babies were way cooler than dinosaurs. The Oligocene kicked ass.

Anyway, there is nothing quite like the experience of knocking back a couple of brewskis and absorbing whole branches of human endeavor in photographic form, noting the subtle differences among objects, the "limited editions," the failed experiments, the popular and the obscure, the lovely and the ugly. I might have to walk slowly past a chain store again tomorrow.

My B-List

I liked Rhian's ranking post, but I want to focus a moment on the B-list. For me, the B-list is inherently more interesting than the A-list--it holds unexpected treasures, books that other people might not have read. It's something you can talk about (or, of course, blog about). What's the fun in recommending Anna Karenina to somebody? I mean, duh.

But when you press upon your friend a copy of, say, G. K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday, or Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö's The Laughing Policeman, or Stanislaw Lem's Fiasco, you may have a friend for life. Or perhaps an enemy. The B-list is where the vagaries of taste begin to creep in; whether people like a B-list book or not actually tells you something about them. Whereas, you know, of course they like Hamlet. (Indeed, we don't even need a hyperlink.)

This is why I'm going to add, below the blogroll on the left-hand column, a new feature of links to B-list books. You may consider these W6 recommendations, though we cannot be held responsible for your reaction to them. (We would be as delighted, however, to learn that you threw one across the room as we would to learn you liked one.)

Sorry for the blank days! We were on the road.

Ranking Favorites

We took the kids to Disney World recently, and as a way of talking about the experience I asked them which ride was their "favorite." Immediately I felt I had made a mistake -- asking children to put diverse experiences into a hierarchy probably flattens it for them. Anyway, since when have I ever been able to say what my favorite of anything is?

But I do have favorite books, if not a favorite. Eudora Welty's The Optimist's Daughter is one; I was reminded of it when I spotted a copy in JRL's grandmother's condo. She had it because her rabbi's wife thought we'd like it. It seems crazy that a person could just forget about a favorite book, but I did. How many more books out there have I forgotten about that are as good as that one? I could never just sit down and make a list. I'd forget too many.

So a hierarchy is out of the question, but I think it's possible to put all my favorite books into two groups -- an "A" list and a "B" list. The A list would include the best books I've ever read: the powerful, life-changing ones like Lolita and Moby Dick and Anna Karenina and The World As I Found It and Housekeeping. I think this list would have about ten books on it, but who knows what I'm forgetting about.

The B list would be made up of books that I love, but that probably haven't altered my worldview in the same way. For instance, I Capture the Castle and The Illustrated Man and Independence Day and Jesus' Son. This would have about 25 (or maybe 50) books on it, but would be much more subject to change than the A list.

Is this a waste of time? Oh, probably. But I couldn't sleep the other night so I spend a few restless hours coming up with this scheme. I think it has to do with our impending move. What to throw out, what to keep? There's probably a C list -- forgettable books I pretty much enjoyed at the time (She's Come Undone) -- and a D list -- deeply flawed stupid books I couldn't put down (Valley of the Dolls).