Then something remarkable comes into your hands. Not very often – no more or less often now than in the 1930s, or the 1890s or the 1750s – but every now and then, you read something wonderful. (Despite all the dull talk of the death of literature, the rate of great novels has always been and will always be roughly the same. By my reckoning, about 10 per decade. Although behind them are dozens of very good novels, for which this reader, at least, is grateful.) Every now and then a writer renews your faith. I’m looking around my desk at this moment for books that have had this effect on me in the not-too-distant past: Bathroom and Television by Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli, Number9Dream by David Mitchell, Hilary Mantel’s An Experiment in Love, Dennis Cooper’s My Loose Thread, The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek, the collected short stories of JG Ballard . . .
For the reader who cares above all for perfection, there are many sophisticated, beautiful and aphoristic side roads in literature that will lead you safely away from the vulgarity of novels with their plots and characters and settings. Off the top of my head: David Markson’s Reader’s Block, Peter Handke’s The Weight of the World, Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style, Georges Perec’s Species of Spaces and Other Pieces and Kafka’s own Blue Octavo Notebooks . . .
Read the rest here.
the evening redness in the west 