Authors It's Practically a Crime I Haven't Read Yet

The never-ending TBR

We all have those authors we’ve been meaning to read for ages right? I’ve been thinking about my particular authors, the ones I’ve been planning on reading for years, if not decades. What keeps me from picking up their books? I’m not entirely sure, but I was struck listening to a podcast interview with Kate Zambreno where she talked about how it can take a very long time for her to pick up books that she knows will be important to her. I forget which particular book she mentioned — maybe it was the Hervé Guibert she had committed to writing a book-length essay on? — but she said it took her a year to finally sit down and read it.

That makes sense to me. When you know a book is going to be meaningful and the reading experience will be intense, it can be intimidating. You have to feel up for it, ready for the challenge.

And then, of course, there’s the fact that bookworms have lists of books they want to read miles long, and somehow the book that just came out or that we just bought seems shinier than the older one on our list. That older book will always be there, why not read the new release or the older book that just caught our eye?

And then there’s my belief in my own immortality. I can’t shake the idea that I’ll eventually read all the books I want to, in spite of being … well … solidly Gen X and very middle-aged. I sometimes think about the number of reading years I have left and how many more books that might mean, and then I stop because that’s horrible, and I go back to my default, which is to assume I’ll eventually get to every book I want to, even though I obviously won’t.

I thought it would be fun to make a list of the authors I’ve been meaning and failing to read forever. It’s possible I might even read some of these authors this year! It would make a fun reading project to read through my list systematically, except I’m not planning on taking on any reading projects. We’ll see what happens — maybe this list will be shorter by the end of the year.

In compiling my list, I stuck to authors whose books I actually own — which makes matters even worse! I could pick up their books at any moment and start reading them! But I don’t. As it turns out, I’m a better book buyer than I am a reader of the books I buy. So here are my authors, chosen not because they are the most famous or important authors I haven’t read, but because they are the most potentially meaningful to me. I included the book(s) I own by each one:

• Anne Carson, The Autobiography of Red. This is one of the more embarrassing entries on the list, given that she’s such an important poet and nonfiction writer and I know I’ll love this book. I do find Carson intimidating, but I need to get over it.

• Clarice Lispector, Near to the Wild Heart (translated by Alison Entrekin), Aqua Viva (translated by Stefan Tobler), and The Complete Stories (translated by Katrina Dodson). Another embarrassing entry. I started Near to the Wild Heart once and didn’t feel up to the task and set it aside, but I’ve heard wonderful things about her stories, plus Lispector is a very important writer for those who care about translations.

• Natalia Ginzburg, The City and the House (translated by Cynthia Zarin), The Little Virtues (translated by Dick Davis), Family Lexicon (translated by Jenny McPhee), and Valentino and Sagittarius (translated by Avril Bardoni). I’ve read one essay by Ginzburg (“He and I”) and I loved it. I think I’ll love her nonfiction best but probably her novels as well. She’s an author I collect but don’t read, and it makes no sense.

• Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider, The Selected Works of Audre Lorde. I care about women’s history and Black history and nonfiction, so it’s obvious that I should read these. I think I’ll (eventually) start with Sister Outsider but the new Selected Works — edited by Roxane Gay! — looks great and includes a lot of poetry too.

  

• Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others. I don’t think I can call myself a serious lover of nonfiction and the essay without reading Sontag (beyond “Notes on Camp”). I’m not sure Regarding the Pain of Others is the best place to start, so recommendations are welcome.

• Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse, Mourning Diary, and Camera Lucida (all books translated by Richard Howard). At least three authors I read last year wrote about Roland Barthes — Kate Zambreno, Moyra Davey, and Nathalie Léger — so obviously I’m getting a sign from the universe that I need to read him.

• Robert Walser, Jakob von Gunten (translated by Christopher Middleton) and The Walk (translated by Susan Bernofsky). Walser is in a similar category to Barthes: people I admire love Walser and I probably will too. I also really like books about walking (though, of course, I own more of these than I’ve read).

• Scholastique Mukasonga, Our Lady of the Nile (translated by Melanie Mouthner). Another important writer in translation I haven’t yet read. I would also like to read her memoirs Cockroaches and The Barefoot Woman (both translated by Jordan Stump).

• Fleur Jaeggy, Sweet Days of Discipline (translated by Tim Parks). I don’t really know how Jaeggy got on my radar, but I have this idea that reading her would be somewhat like reading Annie Ernaux, which I did for the first time last year (otherwise she would be on this list for sure), and whom I love. This is a novel set in a boarding school in post-war Switzerland.

  

• Jenny Erpenbeck, Visitation and The End of Days (both translated by Susan Bernofsky). Another important writer in translation I’ve never read. I’ll bury a little confession here and say that while I talk about myself as a big translation reader, there are many important writers I haven’t read. I mean, this is true for everyone, I know, but I’ve focused on translations only recently and feel I have some catching up to do. (I haven’t, for example, read Robert Bolano, but he’s not on this list because I don’t own his books and kind of don’t want to.)

• Anne Garréta, Sphinx (translated by Emma Ramadan). This novel is a love story where the genders of the characters remains unidentified. Garréta is a member of the Oulipo group who write experimental works using constraints, such as Georges Perec writing without the letter “e,” another author I haven’t read.

• Mary Ruefle, Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures. Ruefle is a poet and essayist (a great combination). People who know what they’re talking about say this collection is wonderful. I don’t like the title, which is part of what has kept me from reading this, but I should get over that.

• Rachel Cusk, Outline, Transit, The Country Life. This one is a little bit of a cheat, since I have read Cusk’s memoir about being a mother, A Life’s Work, but it’s her fiction I’m thinking of for this list. I own three of her novels, unread! Obviously I fully expect to like her.

I’m very curious about what books are on your own version of this list — share yours if you’d like!

Don’t Forget About

A True Novel by Minae Mizumura, translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter (Other Press, 2013, originally published in 2002): this novel is a retelling of Wuthering Heights set in postwar Japan — what more do you need to know? It’s also over 850 pages and comes in two volumes. (It seems to be out of print but it’s possible to find used copies online.) It’s a loose retelling and enjoyable even without knowing Wuthering Heights, but the parallels are fun to follow. It has multiple narrators and stories within stories, and it’s concerned with storytelling and the relationship between fiction and nonfiction as well as with life in Japan in the postwar years. It’s a long, absorbing, fascinating novel. I wrote it in more detail here.

Publishing This Week

The Copenhagen Trilogy: Childhood, Youth, Dependency by Tove Ditlevsen, translated by Tiina Nunnally and Michael Favala Goldman (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux): I feel like this is one of the year’s biggest publications for readers of literature in translation. You can buy this trilogy as a one-book set in hardcover or as three separate paperbacks (I’ll probably get the hardcover). They are memoirs, originally published between 1969-1971, about Ditlevsen’s early life and then first marriage, including experiences with drug addiction and her struggle to be taken seriously as a writer.

Newly Acquired

• Hafez in Love by Iraj Pezeshkzad, translated by Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi and Patricia J. Higgins (Syracuse University Press, publishing Feb. 15): An advanced reader’s copy from the publisher. One of the few books in Persian available to English readers. A fictional account of the 14th-century poet Hafez.

• Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes, translated by Richard Howard (Vintage Classics, originally published in 1980): I just bought this in anticipation of addressing the list above.

• The Walk by Robert Walser, translated by Susan Bernofsky (New Directions, originally published in 1917): Same as the Barthes: just purchased to shorten the list above.

• A Cage for Every Child by S. D. Chrostowska (Sublunary Editions, publishing May 18th): An advanced review copy from the publisher. Uncanny, surreal short stories.

• The Posthumous Works of Thomas Pilaster by Eric Chevillard, translated by Chris Clarke (Sublunary Editions, publishing March 16): An advanced review copy from the publisher. A novel about the unpublished works — diaries, drafts, ephemera — of Thomas Pilaster compiled by a friend.

Currently Reading

• The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw (West Virginia University Press, 2020): a short story collection I’m listening to on audio. This was a surprise finalist for the National Book Award in fiction, “surprise” because it’s unusual for a university press book to make it that far.

  

• Grieving: Dispatches from a Wounded Country by Cristina Rivera Garza, translated by Sarah Booker (Feminist Press, 2020): an essay collection including journalism and personal essays about pain and political violence, focusing on Mexico. I’m only a few essays in, and this book is heavy but very good, with ideas that feel important and timely.

• Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami, translated by David Boyd and Sam Bett (Europa Editions, 2020): a novel following three women in contemporary Japan. I’ve just begun this, but so far I love its frank talk about gender and bodies.

• The Tradition by Jericho Brown (Copper Canyon Press, 2019): still going!

The Cormac Report

My little baby just turned 8! I’m not sure how that happened (I said that to him and he answered “Time!” which, yes, that’s true. He’s a literalist.) He’s been eagerly awaiting his birthday, partly in hopes of getting Ultimate Bodypedia: An Amazing Inside-Out Tour of the Human Body.

He’s super interested in learning about the body, but he’s just as interested in owning the complete set of “Ultimate Pedia” books: Ultimate Dinopedia, Ultimate Reptileopedia, Ultimate Oceanopedia, etc. At least as far as we know he has all of them: he has all the ones he’s found advertised on the backs of the books. We have turned him into an eager little book-collector, just like us. He’s generally better about actually reading what he buys, though.

He did get the book for his birthday (of course), and he loves it. As I wrote last time, we usually read during dinner, and now while we’re eating we get to hear about things like the mites that live on our skin and in our eyebrows, and it’s great.

Have a great week everyone!