in review / By Jay Aubrey-Herzog

Books of 2007

(Jan. 10, 2008) by Various Authors

Here are my favorites of the year. I don’t claim they’re the best, because I obviously can’t read everything. (I do try, though.) Potentially worthy candidates such as Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke and Ben Ratliff’s new book on John Coltrane remain on my shelf unread to taunt me into the new year.

GALLERY >

The Yiddish Policeman’s Unionby Michael Chabon. Chabon’s tale of a sad-sack detective solving a murder in the far north reads like an episode of Northern Exposureco-written by Raymond Chandler, Philip K. Dick and Leo Rosten. In telling his alternate history where Alaska is the Jewish homeland, Chabon painstakingly creates the world of Sitka and its denizens and subcultures, and spins a gripping yarn that holds a warped mirror to our own world with style and panache. A zaftig novel that’ll make you kvell.

Kill All Your Darlings:* *Pieces 1990-2005 by Luc Sante. Sante’s essays take on the gentrification of New York City, the roots of American music and his own childhood, all with equal verve. He has an insider’s ear for speech and an outsider’s appreciation of the dark neglected corners of culture, as well as a concision of style second to none.

The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Centuryby Alex Ross. The classical music critic of the New Yorker chronicles the way history and aesthetics collided in the last century, from Strauss and Mahler to Stockhausen, Steve Reich and John Adams. Ross is such a generous storyteller that you often don’t even realize that he’s breezily leading you through some of the most daunting music of the 20th century. Far from being a snob, he takes pains to point out the back-and-forth feedback loop between pop and classical music, and how both fed the other creatively. This is an ambitious cultural history brilliantly told through the lens of music.

Smells Like Dead Elephants: Dispatches from a Rotting Empire by Matt Taibbi. In his latest collection of political pieces from Rolling Stone, Taibbi takes Hunter S. Thompson’s gonzo torch and runs with it, though with slightly more sober and enlightening results. From corruption in Congress to the tragic events of Hurricane Katrina and Abu Ghraib, Taibbi is there with a clear eye and a sharp tongue. His constant cynicism occasionally grates, but his anger is usually aimed at the right targets, and he has a gift for invective that at its best rivals that of his hero H.L. Mencken.

Shortcomings by Adrian Tomine. Tomine is perhaps the subtlest comic artist working today, both in his writing and art, and this graphic novel is the book that he’s been working toward for the past decade. The coming of age story of Ben Tanaka, a defensive, insecure young Asian American, obviously shares some parallels with Tomine’s own life. Unlike many other young autobiographical comics creators who think that just being honest is enough, Tomine is also a shrewd observer of human nature and character who has the crucial discipline to transform experience into art.

Flight by Sherman Alexie. This year saw the death of the great Kurt Vonnegut, and Alexie’s story of a young Indian man “unstuck in time” to various scenes of war and violence throughout history is a fine tribute to Vonnegut’s seemingly simple non-linear storytelling style and bleak humanism. An affecting parable about the psychic cost of violence.

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