California

California, by Edan Lepucki, is gripping. I read it in three days, slowed only by the birth of my son. Otherwise, I probably would have knocked it out in a day. Usually, reading puts me to sleep, but I stayed up late with California, coming to bed only after my wife yelled at me from the bedroom to get some sleep. Only guilt, dramatic life changes, and interruptions from hospital staff kept me from the novel.

Set in the title state a generation from now, California is the story of a married couple trying to survive in the crumbling remains of society. It's a frightening, believable post-apocalypse. The novel is propelled not by action, but by unfolding answers to the creepy mysteries of a world after the internet, where the ways that power and economics work are not easy to research. It all holds up. Exploring subject matter that could be maudlin or juvenile in other hands, Lepucki creates characters and situations that are multi-layered, unsettling, and thoroughly human.

My Struggle: Book 6

My Struggle: Book 6 by Karl Ove Knausgaard is 1232 pages long. It took me three months to plow through, and not just from its length. Emboldened by the success of the previous five books in his magnum opus, Knausgaard gives himself permission here to be at his most indulgent. He'll write about wrangling his children for 300 pages, for example. He'll meditate on poetry and narrative voice for 200 pages. He'll revisit his wife's mental illness, making their marriage fraught at best and terrifying at worst (they've since divorced). And he'll read Hitler's autobiography and examine it for hundreds of pages and still, frustratingly, never answer the obvious question: Why did he name his book after Hitler's?

Still, Book 6 was a fine read and a fitting cap to the most interesting piece of work I've probably ever read. For me, Knausgaard's appeal comes from his treatment of time, his structure, and his pacing. He's able to keep momentum, whether spending 50 pages on a single afternoon (the effect of reading in real time) or transcending it all and exploring the eternal: God, art, significance. It's brilliant. Jeffrey Eugenides put it best: Knausgaard broke the sound barrier on the autobiographical novel. It's honest and evasive, thrilling and tedious, stupid and brilliant. It's everything. I think Hamlet, Moby-Dick, and My Struggle belong on the top shelf, books that come closest to really getting at the human condition in the imperfect medium of the written word. 

Actual Air

Actual Air by David Berman was the only collection of poetry I read last year. I normally don't read whole collections of poetry, unless they're written by people I know (Joseph Millar, Bonnie Arning), or genius Poet Laureates (Kay Ryan). But Berman released an album last summer, under the name "Purple Mountains." And I had been listening to a lot of Silver Jews. And he died by suicide in August. 

Actual Air was written in 1999, a totally different time. He wasn't married then, or separated; he hadn't hit the low points of addiction or his estranged relationship with his conservative lobbyist father. He was a young nineties artist making wry, ironic observations about a pre-internet world. The collection is mostly a delight, with a few high points ("Snow," "Self-Portrait at 28"), and a few more forgettable, too-cute experiments in wordplay. Still, I was entertained. A surprise favorite was the last poem, "The Double Bell of Heat." A deaf adult man returns to his parents' house and brakes for their "Slow Deaf Child" sign. It's funny and strange and a little sad: exactly how I think of David Berman when I remember him, which is often.

White Fragility

White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo is a short, powerful look at a phenomenon that, once pointed out, exists everywhere. It's controversial, though, and I've had several people laugh aloud when they see the title of the book I'm reading. Potential readers need to accept the following: almost no one considers themself racist; racism persists; unexamined, often subconscious assumptions allow racism to persist. DiAngelo, who is white, understands the reflexive defensiveness that almost all white people adopt when confronted with white fragility, and she guides the (presumably white) reader as gently as possible to see the topic. As mentioned, white fragility exists everywhere.

I'm reading two other books in this season of my life about this topic: How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi and Biased by Jennifer Eberhardt, PhD. Together, they make up a sort of anti-racist trilogy that pushes me outside of my comfort zone. White Fragility was deeply personal, and at times the voices that DiAngelo would challenge ("I was taught to treat everyone the same"/"I don't see color"/"I judge people by what they do, not who they are") sounded like they were coming from inside my head.