In an interview on Al Guthrie's blog Sandra Scoppettone said the two novels she found most perfect were Elmore Leonard's GET SHORTY and Anne Tyler's DINNER AT THE HOMESICK RESTAURANT.
I concur with both of these choices, but especially the later. For a book to be perfect to me, it must reveal an important truth in it. For a long time Tyler was able to do this for me. She wrote about a world I felt she got exquisitely right. And beyond that, she moved me.
What book comes as close as possible to being perfect for you? Sandra picked two, but you only get one.
35 comments:
I'd probably choose something by Barbara Pym. A GLASS OF BLESSINGS is the first one that popped into my head. (But ask me tomorrow and I'll have a different response.)
Patti - I have to confess, that's almost an impossible task for me. I think it's because I have those moments of "Ah, this is perfect!" about a novel at one or another time in life, but then things change. Or I read another that sends me somewhere different. It's an interesting question, though, as all of yours are.
That was a very good interview, by the way, and not just because I agree with a lot of what Sandra said.
As an aside, Sandra was a member of DAPA-EM for a while, partly coiciding with her "Jack Early" period, and she "tuckerized" (you could look it up) a lot of us by using our names for minor characters in her book DONATO AND DAUGHTER.
That said, I don't think I could possibly pick one book. The one that pops into my mind first is James Clavell's SHOGUN.
Jeff M.
HUCKLEBERRY FINN.
What I agreed with most was the discussion of "likeable characters" as I've quit reading many authors over the years (Patricia Cornwell comes immediately to mind) because I disliked the main character. I won't name others.
Jeff M.
Oh, boy. Barbara Pym was brilliant. I would also add Elizabeth Taylor.
Sandra is ebooking her out of print books now. I am anxious to read Donato and Daughter especially.
WHen you do you'll recognize a lot of the names.
Jeff M.
"Dinner" is a great choice. It was the first thing I read by Tyler, but nothing else I read by her seemed to come close to it and I finally gave up. My own pick would be Ford Madox Ford's "The Good Soldier". Among crime novels I'd go with Margaret Millar's "How Like an Angel" or her husband's "The Chill".
Great choise, MP. Ford's book was amazing and you can never go wrong with Millar.
I almost liked Celestial Navigation and The Accidental Tourist as much--but not quite.
Lots of near-perfects. Years ago, when I read Ken Kesey's SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION I thought it was perfect. Don't know that I'd feel the same way today.
I liked THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST and BREATHING LESSONS, Patti.
Jeff M.
The Snow Leopard, by Peter Matthiessen.
A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES is another.
BREATHING LESSONS also was a good TV movie.
Phil weighs in with MOBY DICK, which I have never made it through.
Great question, Patti. Diffficult to answer.
Perfection, I think, is a moment in time.
Lasting perfection is the ideal, I suppose.
For that I'd pick PRIDE AND PREJUDICE by Jane Austen. A book written by a woman who, despite her limited worldly experience, managed to get at several important truths still relevant today.
That may be the book I have read most often--that and The Great Gatsby.
Books don't get to be perfect. Though the many excellences of GATSBY make is a fine novella choice.
The closer to perfect one gets is certainly made easier by a relative lack of ambition...the most ambitious works, such as USA or FINNEGANS WAKE or REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST, have as a result certain or manifold shortfalls.
So, working toward a more limited goal and doing so so brilliantly, and striking one's art and truth out of that compass, help make the likes of GATSBY and SEIZE THE DAY or THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODY or even THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN as closer to some Platonic idea of narrative.
That, said, my choices for this discussion are (as well as former FFBs) three that no one else here will choose, THE FEMALE MAN by Joanna Russ and THE ENQUIRIES OF DOCTOR ESTERHAZY by Avram Davidson, which both attempt so much (the Russ is genuinely Swiftian, and more concisely so) and achieve nearly all of it (and the Davidson is a collection of linked short stories, of course), and THE FINAL SOLUTION, the novella by Michael Chabon, which is more modest in ambition but does nearly everything it attempts to do exquisitely.
Though not my favorite book (near the top though) I thought that Wharton's AGE OF INNOCENCE was the bast structured, the best executed book I read. I loved the characters and cried at the ending which is my favorite last chapter of any book.
HOUSE OF MIRTH is not too shabby either. THE FEMALE MAN must be a corker, Todd. Dos Passos is nearly forgotten today, isn't he? Never been able to make it through MAGIC MOUNTAIN although THE BUDDENBROOKS was a favorite. JEAN BRODY is amazing.
There's a reason, Patti, that despite the neglect of Russ's other fiction by publishers, and of similar works of genius by other writers of Russ's stature (including Davidson), that THE FEMALE MAN has never been out of print. It has managed to find its audience (often despite the worst efforts of the publishers' packaging), though it deserves more. It refuses to be denied. Spark, really, similarly, though I hope her collected short stories volume is still in print.
(Russ's nonfiction, from uni presses, tends to stay in print, though perhaps notably her most challenging book, the slim MAGIC MOMMAS, TREMBLING SISTERS, PURITANS & PERVERTS, was instead issued by Crossing Press and is now long OP...and her last to be written, though the reviews and essays collection THE COUNTRY YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN was issued afterward, WHAT ARE WE FIGHTING FOR?, has also fallen out of print, from large commercial house St. Martins)
If I had to pick one, I'd go with THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE by James M. Cain.
Tight as can be and the movie ranks at the top too.
Going by your definition Patti - a book that must reveal an important truth - I immediately think of THE CIDER HOUSE RULES. This admittedly is a highly personal choice as when I read it I was just embarking on my life alone. I was about to leave for Chicago to live in my first apartment and knew NO ONE in the city and I had no job. Irving talks about being of use and being useful to others throughout the novel. It is also the one book of his most like a Dickens novel - something that Irving confessed he was trying to do in many interviews over time. It will always remain a perfect book for me for of all those reasons.
I just saw CHR done as a two-part, five hour play and its merits were abundantly clear. I loved his first six or seven books and then something happened as with Anne Tyler. They ran out of new truths, I guess.
THE MALTESE FALCON
Although this is one of my very favorite movies, I have never read the book. Shame on me.
I have an odd choice, one that supports Todd's comment about a perfect book having modest ambitions:
Kleinzeit, by Russell Hoban.
I remember reading TURTLE DIARY and another one-Ridley Something but never this one. Interesting.
Is TURTLE DIARY the book the basis for the movie of the same title? I was highly impressed with the flick.
My own tastes change and I rarely reread books. I also cannot pick one book. Of recent reads (within the last 5 years) I say GO-GO GIRLS OF THE APOCALYPSE and RUN, BOY, RUN.
Farther back is CURRAHEE: A SCREAMING EAGLE IN NORMANDY (a Michigan author) a paperback of which I bought when I was a middle schooler and read over and over
Riddley Walker. It's strange but brilliant.
If Kate wasn't busy Englanding she'd make my burble about Russ look like the soul of restraint and concision as she enthused about Hoban.
I am flabbergasted again...how could you read so much crime fiction and never THE MALTESE FALCON, Patti? Even I have read a bit of Ngaio Marsh and some Christie...and I'm least familiar with the cozy end of the pool...
Gerard: in the event you haven't already learned, yes...Harold Pinter adapted Hoban's novel for the screenplay of TURTLE DIARY.
Perfect book which doesn't have to be a mystery for me is Toni Morrison's Beloved, for which she won the Pulitzer, and for her body of work, the Nobel Prize.
Also, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.
Mystery: Gunshot Road by Adrian Hyland was a terrific read, beautiful prose, and Hypothermia by Arnaldur Indridasson was excellent.
Tom Franklin's Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter is outstanding.
Two out of three books I read are "literary" fiction, Todd. And I only am able to read 1-2 books a week. Often if I have seen the movie first, I have little desire to read the book.
Crooked Letter x2 was terrific and I loved Jar City although haven;t read Hypothermia yet.
SONG OF SOLOMON is my favorite Morrison although it's hard to choose among them.
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