12.30.04
Pond Scum: Plums in the Icebox
By Steve Finbow
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I thought it would be easy. A doddle. A piece of cake. A walk in the country. I thought, 'I know what I'll do for my last column of 2004, I'll do a review of the year. You know, best novel, best film, best website.' A slam dunk. Duck soup. A morsel of micturition. I thought wrong. It was not as easy as ABC. Oh, no. Nuh-uh. But I had a go and surprised myself in some categories. Overall, I think my choices are conservative; but, looking back on the year, there wasn't a whole lot of radical work out there; or, if there was, I missed it.
Art by Nicholas Allanach
For ease of categorisation, and to stay in theme with the Pond Scum ethos, I have split the review into best USA and best UK when possible, with the odd international entry. Eligibility: books, records, etc. had to have been published, issued, broadcast, in Britain in 2004 in whatever format I read, listened to, looked at, first.
Best Novel USA
Philip Roth – The Plot Against America. Stephen Elliott – Happy Baby. Pete Dexter – Train. I think I'm going to have to go with the Roth. Back to his best. Prose mastery. Coruscating wit. Armpit-scorching insights. Bravery. Even though he has said it isn't a satire of contemporary politics, the novel can be read as such and therein lies its power. It is intuitive yet worldly – Anschauung and Weltanschauung. Both the Elliott and the Dexter are bloody good reads for very different reasons.Disappointment of the year: Nicholson Baker – Checkpoint. Now, I'm a big Baker fan and would read U&I every day if there weren't other books out there, but Checkpoint was all the things The Plot Against America wasn't – it was easy, obvious, and, well, boring. Oh, and Tom Wolfe – I Am Charlotte Simmons. I read it over a weekend; I forgot it in a day. Honourable mentions: Joyce Carol Oates – The Falls. Heidi Julavits – The Effect of Living Backwards. Jonathan Ames – Wake Up, Sir!
Best Novel UK
Colm Toibin – The Master (Yes, I know he's Irish but I've appropriated him and can someone tell me how to pronounce his name?) David Mitchell – The Cloud Atlas. Jonathan Coe – The Closed Circle. Hard one this. Jonathan Coe's The Rotters’ Club is one of my all-time favourite novels and although I thought The Closed Circle was good, it relied too much on derived coincidence. David Mitchell's The Cloud Atlas was a masterpiece of narrative juggling but I still find when I read him that he's somewhat Murakami-lite. So, the winner is The Master – a thorough exploration of the writing life, fame, sexuality, and loneliness.Disappointment: David Lodge's Author! Author!, but it was up against the The Master. Honourable mention: Toby Litt – Ghost Story.
Best Novel International
Harry Mulisch – Siegfried. JM Coetzee – Elizabeth Costello.Best Short Story Collection USA
David Foster Wallace – Oblivion. ZZ Packer – Drinking Coffee Elsewhere. Julie Orringer – How To Breathe Underwater. I have to contrast the Wallace with the Packer. Wallace has always been accused of writing too much. Too many words, man. But he stretches the form. He morphs the short story into new shapes. Packer is the obverse to Wallace and it is exciting that they are producing powerful contemporary collections. Packer is unpretentious, lean, and incisive. But it goes to Wallace just because he's doing things not a lot of other short story writers would even consider. Honourable mentions: Sheila Heti – The Middle Stories. David Eggers – How We Are Hungry.Disappointment: I'm sorry to say Jonathan Lethem – Men and Cartoons. Again, big Lethem fan but couldn't connect with this collection, same old same old, and why was "Access Fantasy" included when it was already in the short story collection The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye?
Best Short Story Collection UK
Struggled with this one but Julian Barnes – The Lemon Table had some wry comments on age and death. My favourite, however, was M. John Harrison's Things That Never Happen, a collection of stories ranging from realism to fantasy through horror and sci-fi. Superb.Best Online Short Story USA
No contest. George Saunders – Manifesto: A press release from PRKA. Published in Slate.Best Online Short Story UK
No contest. Ian McEwan – The Diagnosis. Published in The New Yorker.Best Non-Fiction USA
Stephen Elliot – Looking Forward To It. William T Vollmann – Rising Up and Rising Down: Some Thoughts on Violence, Freedom and Urgent Means. The Elliott helped me through the afternoons in LA. It accompanied me to The Dresden Rooms and Hank’s Bar. The Vollmann is an abridged version of his seven-volume magnum opus. I’m gonna go for the Elliott – the new Vidal? The new Thompson? The new Hitchens? Which leads me nicely to…Best Non-Fiction UK
Christopher Hitchens – Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays. I know he’s almost American these days but he handles subjects others would treat as if they were prickly hand grenades.Best Literary Biography USA
Blake Bailey – A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates.Best Literary Biography UK
A treasury of biographies including Norman Sherry – Life of Graham Greene: 1955-1991 Vol 3, Edwin Williamson – Borges: A Life, but my favourite was Jonathan Coe – Like a Fiery Elephant: The Story of B.S. Johnson.Best Website/Blog USA
Not including Me Three obviously. BoingBoing for all things unusual. Literary: I'd say Eyeshot, Locus Novus, Pindeldyboz. Humour: YPR. Maud Newton for all the things I don’t have time to read. Political: Guerrilla News Network. And Mr. Sun.Best Website/Blog UK
Spike Magazine. Splinters. And if you don't like flying, check out The Man in Seat Sixty-One.Best Music USA
Scissor Sisters – Scissor Sisters. Kings of Leon – Aha Shake Heartbreak. Tom Waits – Real Gone. Scissor Sisters sound like Elton John, The Bee Gees, and Queen – bad, worse, dreadful. But they also sound like Todd Rundgren, Steely Dan, and The Tubes. It's going to have to be the Scissor Sisters only because I misheard the opening lyrics to Filthy/Gorgeous as:‘When you're walkin' down the street
And a man tries to get your kidneys.’Best Music UK
Franz Ferdinand – Franz Ferdinand. The Streets – A Grand Don't Come For Free. The Libertines – The Libertines. It’ll have to be Franz Ferdinand for "Tell Her Tonight" and because they sound like Television, Talking Heads, and XTC.Best Song Heard in a Pub that Brought Back Good Memories
A Certain Ratio – Shack Up.Worst Song Heard in a Pub that Brought Back Bad Memories
Lonnie Donegan - My Old Man’s A Dustman.Best Film USA/UK
I asked myself, ‘Steve, what was the best film you saw this year?’ And I answered, ‘Er….’ I don’t have a best film of 2004 because I didn’t go to the cinema. I didn’t go in 2003 either. I like films but I don’t like cinemas. Warm, dark, the maroon velvet seats remind me of the womb, and then there’s the spermatic smell of popcorn. I fall asleep. No matter how good the film, I’m oblivious after 10 minutes. So I took a straw poll amongst my friends and colleagues. The winner was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Elephant a close second, and Die Fetten Jahre Sind Vorbei, or The Edukators, in the international section.Round Up
Bad year for politics. Good year for fiction. I’d like to have seen something from Zadie Smith, and why isn’t Mark Leyner publishing anything – if he is, where is it? To close, I’d like to thank Sarah Stodola, Lee Klein, John Warner, and Kerrie Slavin for their patience, advice, and humo(u)r this year. Hope you all enjoy the remainder.
Click here to read previous Pond Scum columns.
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Steve Finbow writes out of London, England. He has worked for the poet Allen Ginsberg, the writer Victor Bockris, and the artist Richard Long. His fiction, essays, and short plays appear, or will appear, in Eyeshot, 3am Magazine, Yankee Pot Roast, uber, Locus Novus, InkPot, Dicey Brown, The Guardian Online, and Pindeldyboz. He is currently working on a novel (Yeah, right). He can be contacted here.
© 2004 Me Three
