My Literary 2018: An Analysis

2018 was a fairly typical reading year for me in terms of quantity, with an average of just under one book a week. It was an unusual year in terms of the balance between fiction and non-fiction: I read almost twice as many fiction books (31) as non-fiction (17), whereas I'm usually closer to 50-50.

The average rating was 3.3, which means my reading slightly exceeded my expectations. My only five-star book was non-fiction (Nature's Metropolis), but I read multiple four-and-a-half star novels (Lincoln in the Bardo and Exit West).

Ben Marcus, Notes from the Fog *** 1/2

Like the author's earlier collection of stories Leaving the Sea, Notes from the Fog starts and finishes with fairly traditional stories and hides its most experimental ones in the center. The stories in part 3, "Critique," "Lotion," and "Omen," eluded me, but most of the others have a human warmth despite their bleak scenarios. "Cold Little Bird," for example, is about a 10-year-old boy who starts refusing affection from his parents, and how this embargo affects his father. Many of the stories also address failures of language, with characters deciding it's better to stop speaking.

My favorites were "Cold Little Bird," "A Suicide of Trees," and "Stay Down and Take It."

Thomas Metzinger, The Ego Tunnel ****

The Ego Tunnel provides an overview of recent findings in neuroscience and what they tell us about the nature of consciousness. Metzinger is a (German) philosopher, which makes his approach different from, say, Antonio Damasio. Metzinger is interested in how the subjective experience of being conscious arises from brain mechanics. In the later chapters, he also ponders how our worldview and ethical systems will change as we discover neural correlates for increasingly subtle states of being and learn to manipulate our consciousness.

Despite writing in a language not his own, Metzinger creates direct and clear analogies that shine through the technical jargon. (Except for the metaphor that gives the book its title; that one I don't care for.) Like William James, who was also interested in subjective experience, Metzinger soberly considers disreputable subjects such as out-of-body experiences and lucid dreaming.

Bruce Sterling, Distraction **

I picked up a used copy of Distraction on the occasion of its 20th anniversary because of a fawning review on Slate.com.

"It offers a densely textured, plausible alternative reality layered on top of our own...Distraction is alarmingly predictive in the way it depicts a world in which America has gone deeply off the rails."

I did not find either of these claims to be true. On the contrary, Distraction felt to me as if it were composed by a writing workshop exquisite-corpse style. The action flows along but doesn't have a central animating logic. Sterling introduces an interesting idea, a character has some exposition about what makes it interesting, and the plot moves forward without pursuing the idea. Characters' motivations change within a single scene.

This frustrating style starts on the very first page. Our main character Oscar Valparaiso is watching video of a "riot" in which an apparently undirected crowd materializes, tears down a bank, then vanishes as mysteriously as it appeared. Oscar is obsessed with learning what happened: How was it coordinated? What was the intent? Who was behind it? How did they keep everyone silent afterward? Oscar closes his laptop on page 4 and pursues other matters; the riot is not mentioned again until page 194, and it never becomes a plot point.

The same thing happens when it appears the book is going to be about the breakdown of the U.S. federal government, or the influence of politics on science, or biogenetic manipulation of human nature, or decentralized societies run on "reputation credits" instead of money. Interesting topics all, yet they never coalesce into a coherent narrative.

Distraction drove me to distraction.

Meghan O'Gieblyn, Interior States ****

O'Gieblyn was raised as an evangelical Christian in the Midwest. She lost her faith while attending Moody Bible College and eventually became a professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Her background gives her an insider's understanding of the Midwestern worldview and the coastal cultural elite worldview. Her main goal in these essays is to show how each side of this divide oversimplifies the views of the other, and that a lot of liberal secular culture shares basic concerns with traditional Christian culture.

The first essay, "Dispatch from Flyover Country," starts with a nice metaphor. From the porch of their trailer in the western Michigan woods, O'Gieblyn and her husband look out over Lake Michigan at the unusual but beautiful sunset. The haziness is caused by wildfires in California. The essay goes on to describe how Midwesterners feel left behind by the cultural vanguard at the coasts, but that the cultural changes filter into their lives whether they like it or not.

The best essays ("Dispatch from Flyover Country," "Contemporaries," and "Hell") are the ones that capture her betwixt feeling without trying to explain it too much. All of them offer a subtle and respectful demonstration of cultural conservatism.