Go With the Original Vs. The Revised Kama Sutra

Already I'm wondering if a whole year of picaresque is such a good idea. A stylistic element that I was not out to encounter keeps popping up: the stupendously aggrandized ego of the author/protagonist. It is too soon in the year to pity these writers. We read to find the universal, the piece of ourselves in the adventures of the main character or the lives of the biographers. However, it seems as though writing about one's life under the guise of a picaresque story by itself permits the author to not just exaggerate and satirize, but to extol his urges as beyond the pale.
Related to this disheartening characteristic of self-promotion is the diminution of other people, as mere foils for the main character's exploitations.

The Revised Kama Sutra was written by Richard Crasta, who calls himself Avatar Prabhu for this novel. (Coincidentally, Avatar is raking in billions of dollars for director Cameron as I read the book.) Avatar is an appropriate pseudonym for Crasta, someone who is uncomfortable in his own heritage and skin, demeaning the European colonialists who imprinted themselves on India, but nevertheless, completely enamored by America of the 1960s. So much of the story line aligns with Crasta's life: his being a Managlorean Catholic; his father being a WWII prisoner of war; his education by nuns and Jesuits. (I switched to this book about an Indian rogue when I was baffled by the language and cultural and geographic reference in Kipling's Kim; I will head back to India shortly.)

Put up against my ten elements, I have to conclude that TRKS is picaresque. In fact, it is too formulaic. What I find lacking is the turn of phrase that begs to be underlined. I was almost 400 pages into the book before I marked anything off: "When one arrives at the point where the rate of memory loss plus the rate of confusion exceeds the rate of absorption of new knowledge, it is time to give up one's quest for understanding ... it was difficult not to come to the conclusion that all quests, including this one, are by definition quixotic, and even insane."

The author/protagonist does end up with some kind of personal growth at the end, despite his dalliance with his publisher. "Fight, fight, and enjoy the fight, but don't take it too personally. Because the Other is also you, and your separateness is an illusion."

Things I liked: his insights and painful disclosures about how prejudiced Americans were to his dark skin when he came to study here; his "whimsical" and "compassionate" glossaries which I should have read when the foot note numbers popped up instead of waiting until the end. It would have helped with the references to exotic food and ethnic slurs. And the six degrees of separation reference to Fowler's English Usage, the best throw away line after reading that absolutely tedious biography of Fowler and his dictionaries.

What I didn't like: the contrived letters to Jackie Kennedy and the editorial comments of his female publisher.

If I hadn't plowed onward and started another novel last night, one that after only 60 pages, I decided was eminently "under-line-able," I would have rethought me 2010 list ... perhaps switching over to 50+ books about food.

Created in No One’s Image: Rubyfruit Jungle

What is it with me and introductions? Once again, the book I reserved at the library was a special 15^th anniversary edition of Rubyfruit Jungle, with a retrospective from Rita Mae Brown prefacing the novel. Brown, like Kosinski did in The Painted Bird, reacquaints the reader with the large social order at the time the book was written and the pains associated with its birth. Brown envisions writing a second introduction to mark the 30^th, wondering how much closer she will have traveled to her self-realization.

Brown is more transparent about using her life as the framework for her story. Molly Bolt (hear echoes of Molly Bloom) is an adopted daughter of a poor family in central Pennsylvania (Brown was born in Hanover) who relocate to southern Florida (she similarly moved to Fort Lauderdale). Molly is intellectually quicker than her foster family. She rebels perpetually against the imposition of girlish and womanly activities and traits. She excels at school and aspires to become President, a lawyer or a film maker.

It is because she is so independent, so self-determining, that Rubyfruit Jungle, I believe, is better categorized as a bildungsroman, a coming of age novel. Yes, Molly has outrageous adventures and is able to wield significant powers because of some of them. But her encounters are not accidental or random. She is directing her life long before she makes her first movie.

Brown attempts to make Molly a “picara” via numerous lesbian sex scenes. She has Molly hitchhike to New York and live in abandoned cars and squalid apartments, scrounging for food. But in every instance, Molly is the prime mover, not subject to random threats or spontaneous escapades. She anguishes over her bed mates and is more than picky at the first gay bar she visits. Published in 1973, such a plot created some stir, but expose alone does not constitute a true picaresque. Molly comes across as too iconic, too heroic to be a picara.

Trust the Tale Rather than the Teller: The Painted Bird

The edition of The Painted Bird that I read had an introduction by its author, Jerzy Kosinski, that explained in great length the initial public response to its publication in 1965. It was the height of the Cold War and Communist Poland attack Kosinski brutally for his portrayal of Polish peasants during World War II. Others accused him of profiteering from the Holocaust; still others said the story was plagiarized. Faint memories of these headlines surfaced, drowned out by my association of his name with Roman Polanski and the Manson murders. The introduction tainted my venturing into the book.

But today, while reading another introduction, this one written by John Bayley, to Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, Bayley quotes D. H. Lawrence: “trust the tale rather than the teller.” And reading The Painted Bird decades after it’s blaring headlines, the story holds up quite well as a tale.

In a year where I am reading only picaresque novels for the Slackers’ Blog, I do not expect such outlandish fantasies to be essentially autobiographical. But as a budding author, and after several years devotion to memoirs and biographies, I still search for the kernel of personal experience that affects and directs a writer’s themes and plots. So sure, Kosinski was a young boy in Poland during the War and even before that horror, certainly knew first hand about the poverty, myths, and distrust of strangers found in isolated communities across his country.

Picaresque writing is intentionally exaggerated. I one analysis that insists it has always been a marginalized, suspect genre. Another analysis claims by writing about political and social rascals the author intends to foster their downfall via satire.

Given my ten elements of picaresque writing, The Painted Bird aligns with most of them and falls into this category. I especially liked how the unnamed young protagonist, especially early on in the story, attributes the cosmic reasons causing his abuse: whether it is primal witchery, organized religion, or Communism. Clearly, initially, the boy’s maltreatment is not of his making. He looks different and the peasants label him as either an orphan gypsy or Jew and he suffers accordingly. What is more troubling to me, and at this point in my annual escapade strikes me as a non-picaresque feature, is the eventual attraction to perpetuating insult and torture on others as he enters his teen years … certainly a real consequence of cruelty and domestic violence that is much more acknowledged now than in the mid-60s. With the boy not obtaining enlightenment, the reader is left with the conclusion that yet another generation of hatred comes out of the War.

Slacker Hamagrael read The Painted Bird years ago and is not going to reread it, given the exhaustive list of other novels. She wrote to tell me she still remembers the boy swinging his lantern to scare away wolves and bullies. The adventures are highly visual and I will recall most the boy floating down the creek on the fish bladder, a dark take on Pecos Bill on his catfish.

Finally, I was troubled by the boy’s reunification with his parents. Kosinski uses the metaphor of the bird whose feathers were painted over by a trapper and when subsequently released back to the flock, is not recognized but viciously attacked. The boy is viewed throughout the story as an outsider and assaulted because he is foreign. His coloration because of the War has to be camouflage; yet when his parents can identify him by his “markings,” he does not want to reenter the family. He prefers the “colors” of his gang-like undisciplined peers.

So I’ll Know It When I See It

I am beginning to feel like the Supreme Court now that I’m reading the second book on the 2010 list and not really sure that it stacks up all that well as picaresque. As I’ve been researching the selections and checking synopses and other reviews, many sound bounder-line: either adventure stories, tales of coming of age under difficult circumstances, or expressions of political philosophies clothed in assumed persona.

Putting together a list of elements that I think should be found in the perfect picaresque novel will keep me true to my search and give me a checklist against which to decide if a particular book readily is assignable to this genre. I also intend to find some kind of scholarly tome used in advanced (or at least entertaining) English courses to see how my array of required ingredients compares to other’s studies.

So far, the two books I’ve started are both great reads, whether or not they represent the ideal rogue.

Here are what I think are the primary characteristics of a picaresque story.

A naïve protagonist
A quest
Bizarre adventures
Deprived encounters
Danger
Sex, debauchery, crime and other lack of morals or breakdown of society
Skin of the teeth escapes
A traveling buddy
Misunderstanding of events and motives
Eventual enlightenment or maturity

While I haven’t fully fleshed out each element, there seems to me to be nuances and variations within these fixtures. The hero/heroine’s “innocence” can be attributable to youth or senility, class, or substance abuse/addiction. The protagonist’s confrontations with depravity should seem random and not intentional, even when there is an underlying attraction towards evil. The story should be populated with ugly, malformed, amoral, oversexed characters, or such stock characters as witch, conjurer, priest, or outlaw. Danger should arise from the land itself, its political setting or crisis and from people who are both natural enemies and zealot enforcers of social order. The protagonist must express a personal, simple misinterpretation of events, defining the motivation of others against his/her own misguided code of ethics.

The stories should be fast-paced and highly visual and sensual. Plot can advance either by stressing the importance or irrelevance of segue, tying the progress of the character either through a logical or random series of situations, but the more random and less self-directed the better.

As the list has been compiled, the adjective picaresque seems to be applied more readily to more recent publications. I am looking for books that hold true to a somewhat formulaic structure; otherwise, the novels will seem to have been written by bad and egotistical boys and girls, eager to air their sins for their shock rather than redemptive value. Or worse, end up being tales of growing up or traveling in a pro forma dysfunctional family or hostile country.

Another Kind of Journey: 2010 the Year of Rogues, Rascals and Roues

Stretching the point, 2009's list of 50 States was a kind of journey across America, looking to find what might account for regional differences, local oddities and inter-generational traits. Any overarching theme was not something I had used to guide my travels. I did run across whole towns of unusual, sometimes bizarre, people: think the Beans of Main, the entire town of Knockemstiff, Ohio, and the medical quacks of Charlatan. Strangely enough, those surprise encounters became the germ of my idea for the 2010 book list resolution: to read novels where the main character is on his or her own personal journey towards some idealistic goal and is continuously detoured by a whole world of immoral, corrupt, diseased and otherwise disgusting fellow travelers.

Theophilus North, Thornton Wilder's late in life alter ego, aspires to be one such rogue, el picaro, but the good citizens of Newport, Rhode Island are way too tame to hold their own against more notorious picaresque classics, and North's heroics are way too well thought out, too Ivy League. But that book was a great segue and his quote about the attractiveness of being a bit of a rascal is included in last year's posting for RI.

So without further ado, here are another 50-odd books classified as picaresque. All will be novels, but intentionally selected to represent many countries literary best, to include well-known authors who have ventured into this comic structure as well as a host of books published more recently. As with 2009, although listed by year of publication, there is no compulsion to read them chronologically, merely as they can be obtained from the library or wherever. And as I did last year, if one or another is particularly bad or unexpectedly good, I will add alternates or supplements to the list.

Thinking ahead to the end of 2010, I do have expectations and a model of what I think we should find in the story that is most picaresque: a lead character, replete with human weaknesses and foibles, with a heart of gold, no malice, and best intentions; a supporting cast of characters that surprise rather than repulse; and a reconciliation or insight by the lead character at the conclusion of the tale.

For 2010:

1. Satyricon, Petronius Arbiter
2. Golden Ass, Apuleius
3. Don Quixote, Cervantes
4. Gil Blas, Le Sage
5. Moll Flanders, Defoe
6. Joseph Andrews, Fielding
7. The Luck of Barry Lyndon, Thackeray
8. The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, Fielding
9. Candide, Voltaire
10. The Algerine Captive, Royall Tyler
11. The Adventures of Hajii Baba of of Ispahan, Morier
12. Dead Souls, by Nikolai Gogol -- April 16, 2010
13. Martin Chuzzlewit, Dickens
14. Sentimental Education, Flaubert
15. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain
16. Kim, Kipling
17. The Good Soldier, Jaroslav Hasek
18. The Enormous Room, by e. e. cummings -- February 28, 2010
19. The Good Companions, J. B. Priestley
20. Zorba the Greek, Kazantzakis
21. The Adventures of Augie March, Bellows
22. Path to the Nest of Spiders, by Italo Calvino -- February 21, 2010
23. The Tin Drum, by Gunter Grass -- March 26, 2010
24. Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller -- April 10, 2010
25. The Painted Bird, Kosinski -- January 6, 2010
26. The Witches of Karres, Schmitz
27. Flashman, Fraser
28. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter Thompson --February 19, 2010
29. Rubyfruit Jungle, Rita Mae Brown -- January 6, 2010
30. The Great American Novel, by Philip Roth -- March 10, 2010
31. St. Jack, by Paul Theroux -- February 10, 2010
32. Nightwork, by Irwin Shaw -- April 10, 2010
33. Palinurus of Mexico, Del Paso
34. The Dog of the South, by Charles Portis -- January 1, 2010
35. Budding Prospects, T. C. Boyle -- January 25, 2010
36. Eva Luna, Allende -- February 9, 2010
37. Sot-Weed Factor, Barth
38. Solomon Gursky Was Here, Richard
39. Dirty Weekend, by Helen Zahavi -- May 3, 2010
40. Book of the New Sun, Volume 1, Wolfe
41. Faserland, Kracht
42. Breakfast in Babylon, Martin -- February 9, 2010
43. The Puttermusser Papers, Ozick
44. Hotline Healers, Vizenor
45. The Revised Kama Sutra, Prabhu -- January 13, 2010
46. One of the Guys, Young
47. The Autograph Man, Zadie Smith -- March 31, 2010
48. Chancey on Top, Wareham
49. The Disinherited, Ong
50. The Lies of Locke Lamora, Lynch
51. All the Tea in China, by Kyril Bonfiglioli -- March 3, 2010
52. Last Last Chance, Maazel

Okay, I'm getting carried away but I found a dozen more picaresque from a genre search through the local library. Here's more, 2010 will definitely be a pick and choose rather than a "to-do" list.

53. Illywacker, Carey
54. Headhunter, Timm -- gave up on page 294 after several renewals September 25, 2010
55. Imperial Kelly, Bowen
56. On the Contrary, by Andre Brink -- May 8, 2010
57. Diary of a Humiliated Man, de Azua -- July 8, 2010
58. Ripley Bogle, Wilson
59. Childhood: A Novel, by Andre Alexis -- March 4, 2010
60. Meely LaBauve, by Ken Wells -- April 20, 2010
61. The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint, Udall
62. X Out of Wonderland, by David Allan Cates -- February 20, 2010
63. A Rogue's Life, Wilkie Collins -- July 24, 2010
64. Mr. Vertigo, by Paul Auster -- April 12, 2010
66. Shedding Skin, by Robert Ward -- January 14, 2010
67. Hey, Cowboy, Wanna Get Lucky?, by Baxter Black -- February 20, 2010

Bonus Points for the Anthology: State by State, a Panoramic Portrait of America

I think I mentioned early on when I resolved for 2009 to read a book set in, concerning the history of, or written by an author from each State, that I felt undermined to discover that Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey had pretty much had the same idea in 2008. The two Mr. W's brought together 51 young, talented and often award-winning writers (with an occasional cartoonist, actor and chef thrown in for good measure) to do an updated, more personal reprise of the WPA's American Guide series created through the Federal Writers' Project in the 1930s. (And here I am, a would-be author, dealing with the latest depression recovery/stimulus funds as a government worker and the only writing I do is to compress grant announcements and summarize award recipients for web page content, hardly either personal or insightful about my home State.)

Statistically, the two Mr. W's pulled together a stronger selection of excellent storytellers than my effort to identify 51 books wherein the essence of a place played the lead role. Of the 50+ I plowed through this year, 20 earned solid high marks, the kind of books you grab someone by the shoulder and say "read this book," or better yet, you lend your copy to a friend who has a long bus commute to work each day. In State by State (SxS), more than half hit the bull's eye and only about a dozen made their States so boring that they wouldn't seem worth the trip, whether land-based or across the written page.

I thought it would be fun to align my preferences from this anthology against my rankings of the 50 State list I compiled, to see if there was something in a State, per se, that emerged irrespective of how or who wrote about. (See I am too much of a governmental bureaucrat, thinking my statistics will be meaningful, but thankfully, too much of a budding-writer to acknowledge that this was a pointless exercise.) Nonetheless, Florida came through in both top rankings. I've already extolled Susan Orlean for showing that the crimes of her orchid thieves had to take place in the Floridian swamps. Here, Joshua Ferris writes about how it was to grow up on the Florida Keys after relocating from Illinois in the mid-80s. He recalls an almost Huckleberry Finn kind of childhood, with open water, including swimming in the front yard during the eye of his first hurricane, with societal fringe neighbors and employers, and with his discovery that even after personally meeting Jimmy Buffet, his adulthood began with a car ride singing American Pie. (By the way, Susan Orlean also contributed to State by State but for Ohio where she grew up, and sorry Susan, compared to The Orchid Thief, this essay wasn't as compelling.)

Will Blythe writes of New Hampshire, as a native North Carolinian currently living in New York City, not as a resident, exile or transplant. He compares his appreciation of NH thus: "Maybe as a traveler, I'm like a mistress to a great man; my nocturnal privileges allow me to know things the good wife can only dream." Blythe is broad in his essay: writing of religious history, transcendentalism, frost heaves, and the forty varieties of silence in the State -- sort of like the number of shades of green in Eire. It has the same look, feel and people that I found in Irving's Hotel New Hampshire.

Other renderings in SxS glistened and lured me into the highly visual landscapes and made interesting people attractive, in contrast to many more mediocre stories from my blog list. Lydia Millet leaves New York City for Arizona and immediately buys a house in the desert "where the horrible meets the divine." She makes the scenery spectacular and the distances immeasurable, but it is her comparison of these geographic treasures against the diminished and marginal lives of the other local residents and the community that is drawn to the local mini-mart that fully fleshes out her place there as a transplant. Ellery Washington moved from Chicago in 1965 to Albuquerque when his father got work in the nuclear labs. As practically the only Black family in the area, his observations of New Mexico are somewhat similar to Millet's. Washington returns to New Mexico on a visit with his French boyfriend where he tour the sites of NM but discover instead his "defensive kind of local patriotism."

A short essay on Montana by Sarah Vowell is rich in history and has one of the best wrap-up lines: "memorize this line from a Richard Hugo poem set in Philipsburg so you have it handy for life's cold snaps -- "The car that brought you here still runs."

Jack Hitt lures the reader to South Carolina, the real SC, not the Colonial Williamsburg-like theme park of restored Charleston. He and his family are such generational residents, that his encounters with rich, absentee new home owners outshines their wealth and pretensions when he can name the people who previously owned each house in his neighborhood.

Alexander Payne, the man who brought us "Sideways," tours his State of Nebraska like movie's vineyard road trip, infused with humor: "that long flat State that sets between me and any place I want to go ... in fact, you're probably just skimming though this chapter on your way to Nevada."

Yes, there are a couple of States that I think don't stack up as well. The chapters for both Oregon and Vermont are done as cartoons, I guess a new genre that young'ns find attractively concise, but which I conclude doesn't give a sense of place, despite maps and drawings, nor of how a setting and local culture impacted the author. Both Kentucky and California left me flat.

State by State was a perfect way to wrap up my 2009 book list resolution. I ventured forth on a journey to look for how essential a story's setting was to the advancement of its plot. I also wanted to see if that setting took on a unique character because it was anchored in one place or another across America. SxS, especially when read over a short period of time as I did through my second reading, shows that people need to identify with a geographical home base. Others routinely ask new acquaintances where do they come from as a kind of short hand way of placing them in a culture or history. But that is other-imposed and too often stereotypical. Daphne Beal in her essay on growing up near Milkwaukee says her DNA is encoded "WISC." Neighborhood, town, and eventually State, become a more than a stage setting or backdrop for peoples' lives. The symbol of family trees implies family roots, roots that take hold and nourish memories.

January 8, 2010
Four Seasons in Rome by Anthony Doerr (Idaho)
I hesitate to mix look-backs to the 2009 list with picaresque reviews, so I'm going to tag onto the State by State write-up things I have to say about authors I discovered through theses essays.
Last night I finished a wonderful small travelogue, Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World, by Anthony Doerr (Idah0). He won the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, receiving the letter telling him the morning he returns from the hospital after his wife gives birth to twin boys. They pack them up and go. There are so many perspectives interwoven seamlessly: not knowing Italian, getting writers block and being diverted into reading all of Pliny instead of writing, coping with the physical exhaustion of two infants, and of course, the sights, smells and history of Rome.

Two passages quoted below struck me not only for their insights but the power of Doerr's composition:

"Habitualization ... Viktor Shklovsky wrote ... devours work, clothes, furniture, one's wife ... What he argued is that, over time, we stop perceiving familiar things ... Complexities wane, miracles become unremarkable, and if we're not careful, pretty soon we're gazing out at our lives as if through a burlap sack ... A good journal entry ... ought to break up the habitual and lift away the film that forms over the eye, the finger, the tongue, the heart. A good journal entry ought be a love letter to the world. Leave home, leave the country, leave the familiar. Only then can routine experience ... become new all over again."

"Every story seeks, in Emerson's words, the invisible and imponderable. Faith, loss, emotional contact. But to get there, oddly enough, the storyteller must use the visible, the physical, the eminently tangible: the reader, first and foremost, must be convinced. And details -- the right details in the right places -- are what do the convincing ... a writer ... hunts down the most vivid details and links them in sequences that will let a reader see, smell and hear a world that seems complete in itself ... builds a stage set and painstakingly hides all the struts and wires and nail holes, then stands back, and hopes whoever might come to see it will believe ... A journal entry is for its writer; it helps its writer refine, perceive, and process the world. But a story ... is for the reader ... A writer manufactures a dream. And each draft should present a version of that dream that is more precisely rendered and more consistently sustained than the last. Every morning I try to remind myself to give unreservedly, to pore over everything, to test each sentence for fractures in the dream."

Seeing a new world through the opening eyes of his twins, and so committed to excellence in observation, style and purpose, Doerr doesn't need to be standing atop the Janiculum Hill to be head and shoulders above the mass of contemporary authors.

January 9, 2010
The Magician's Assistant by Ann Patchett (Tennessee)
This book has a crackerjack beginning. My hands were almost shaking from the tension that Patchett builds up with the opening crisis as Sabine's husband Parsifal dies. Thinking this book would be a natural compare and contrast for the face to face book club's reading of Didion's Year of Magical Thinking (even with such a similar title), I eagerly read on. Soon Sabine is dreaming fantastical dreams about Parsifal's true love Phan, dreams that are exceptionally comforting if a tad ominous. After Parsifal's will is probated, she learns he had changed his name from Guy Fetters (harken to irons imprisoning him) and he has family in Nebraska in stark contrast to what she had been led to believe, that his well to do parents died in a car crash in Connecticut. His mother contacts her; they connect in Sabine's grief and she eventually flies to Nebraska to stay with them for several weeks. As she comes to learn of the horror of Guy's early life, and to see it repeated before her eyes in the family's successive generation, she dreams less of Phan and Parsifal and their beautiful life and home in Los Angeles and their travels and professional successes. The absence of those dreams diminishes the tale. Sabine's mourning would not pass without some sense of renewal and rebirth, but leaving her in Nebraska at the abrupt end of the novel has reality bite. Her card trick at her sister-in-law's wedding, while a milestone for her in terms of difficulty, falls flat on the wedding guests and seems to be little consolation for her resuming her life on the West Coast alone. With an open invitation to her other sister-in-law to come back to LA with her, with her architectural models collecting dust unfinished in Phan's mansion, and with her parents taking care of Parsifal's overweight white rabbit, Sabine seems stalled, waiting for another night time trance to move her out of the drifts of Nebraska.

A Look Back: The Best from 2009

I have never put together a retrospective that ranks the books I have read over the course of a year. Probably, because when I was reading a biography/memoir for each letter of the alphabet, selecting the top ten hardly seemed a meritorious distinction. With a field of 51 States, several of which had alternate selections, I have a large enough pool to make "piles" that make sense to me.

Strangely, 9 were my favorites and I added a tenth, like all good annual reviews, simply for transitional purposes. Here goes:

1. Florida: The Orchid Thief. This story could not have taken place anywhere else. The swamps with their unique flowers and Indian culture is not only the setting but the motive for these crimes. In addition, the author writes of an off-resort landscape that is arch-Floridian.
2. Kansas: Charlatan. Granted, this story could have taken place as readily in Missouri or any other mid-America State, but I was charmed and amused by this true crime story that is rooted in a time and a naivete of simple homespun but yet still contemporary human longings.
3. California: American Lightning. Does anyone see a pattern here? Once again, I am captivated by a true crime story of unionization and violence in America and the country's first attempts to respond to "terrorism."
4. Washington: Reservation Blues. What a joy to discover Sherman Alexie, compounded when my younger son similarly came to like this author through his short stories in his American literature class this semester where many of the same characters reappeared. Catch Alexie's recent interview on Colbert on Hulu to see his humor in action and his pride in the written word.
5. New Hampshire: Hotel New Hampshire. My first acquaintance with John Irving. Subsequently, I have discovered these themes and images recur in most of his novels, but still love the story and its rendition of New England.
6. Wisconsin: The Women. 2009 was the year I also discovered T. C. Boyle and almost became a groupie, toying with the idea of going to his lecture in Peekskill his fall when he was engaged for part of the 400 year celebrations of Henry Hudson's discoveries. Boyle surpasses the other version of Frank Lloyd Wright's loves and life, Loving Frank, that next to The Women, comes across as a provincial history, lacking in distance and assessment.
7. Illinois: Sin in the Second City. A good book to read after Charlatan to continue to venture into early 20th Century American vice. Also a great contrast to 21st Century New York legislative dysfunction.
8. Hawaii: Letters from Hawaii. Mark Twain at his funniest tethered to nonfiction.
9. Vermont: First (and Second and Third, etc) Person Rural. So quiet, so contemplative, so Vermont. A journal of day to day living in simplicity and community.
10. Rhode Island: Theophilus North. My tenth "force-fit" only as an unanticipated segue into 2010's list of picaresque novels.

Another 10 are books I would not hesitate to strongly recommend to anyone looking for a great read set in an interesting place with unforgettable characters and an author with a powerful writing style: Crazy in Alabama, Meet You in Hell (Pa), The Billionaire's Vinegar (Va), Citizen Coors, The Last Good Time (NJ), The Next Step in the Dance (La), Down River (NC), The Sky Fisherman (Or),The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter (Tn), and The Worst Hard Time (Ok).

Next will be my attempt to compare these top 20 State stories with those in the anthology, State by State.