Pond Scum: A Hulking Carnival: A Review of 2005
By Steve Finbow
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How was it for you? I had a good year. People came. People went. I wasn’t ill. I lived in Manchester for two months and enjoyed it. I visited New York City twice. I made new friends. I saw old friends I hadn’t seen in years. Jesus. What’s wrong with me? Anyone would think I was sociable. Highlight of my year – Grace at the Contact Theatre – thanks to all. Please suffer my indulgences and find below my pick of the best and worst of 2005. Books are either hardbacks or paperbacks published this year.
By Nicholas Allanach
Best Novel USA
No Country for Old Men – Cormac McCarthy, Lunar Park – Bret Easton Ellis, and Europe Central – William T Vollmann. It’s been a good year for American novels. The older generation of writers, I mean pre-Eggers, definitely get the nod over the likes of Jonathan Safran Foer (stop showing off) and Dan Chaon (I tried, buddy). I think you know which book I’m gonna go for – the McCarthy. Genius. Taut, bristling with violence, poetic (Hey, that sounds like me.) It just edges it over Lunar Park (sorry, Helke), which was scary, beguiling, and funny. Honorable mentions: The Brooklyn Follies – Paul Auster, The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil – George Saunders, and Specimen Days – Michael Cunningham.Best Novel UK
Whoa! Not many this year. Er… Arthur & George – Julian Barnes. I hated this first time around. Although, I must admit I read it in a dingy Manchester hotel room – executive suite my arse – it had a fridge that made more noise than a fight between an oversexed tomcat and Luciano Pavarotti in a power shower. And when I asked why I couldn’t get WiFi access (as advertised on their website) on my iBook, the receptionist said that I had to come down to the foyer and plug in my modem!!!! (And I never use exclamation marks.) Anyway, I digress. I loved it second time around. Oh, shit, I’ve just remembered: Saturday – Ian McEwan, Shalimar the Clown – Salman Rushdie…OK, so there were some good British novels. Honourable mentions: On Beauty – Zadie Smith, Beyond Black – Hilary Mantel, and Thirteen Steps Down – Ruth Rendell (say what?) Disappointment: The People’s Act of Love – James Meek; despite brilliant reviews, I read the first 50 pages three times and could get no further.Best Novel International
The Possibility of an Island – Michel Houellebecq, Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami, Slow Man – JM Coetzee, and The Blind Rider – Juan Goytisolo.Best Short Story Collection USA
The Evil BB Chow and Other Stories – Steve Almond, Tooth and Claw: and Other Stories – TC Boyle, Chicago Noir – edited by Neal Pollack, San Francisco Noir – edited by Peter Maravelis, and Brooklyn Noir 2: The Classics – edited by Tim McLoughlinBest Short Story Collection UK
Yet again, I struggled. Er… Er…. Er….. Oh, The Fahrenheit Twins and Other Stories – Michel Faber.Best International Short Story Collection
The Nimrod Flip Out – Etgar Keret.Best Online Short Story
No contest: George Saunders (again) – "CommComm" in The New Yorker online.Best Non-fiction USA
A good year. I’d go for Mediated – Thomas De Zengotita, Consider the Lobster: Essays and Arguments – David Foster Wallace, The Year of Magical Thinking – Joan Didion, and Who’s Afraid of Tom Wolfe – Marc Weingarten.Best Non-fiction UK
My Trade: A Short History of British Journalism – Andrew Marr, Thomas Jefferson: Author of America – Christopher Hitchens, and Edge of the Orison: In the Traces of John Clare’s ‘Journey Out Of Essex’ – Iain Sinclair.Best Literary Biography USA
Not really USA but published by McSweeney’s Believer Books, HP Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life – Michel Houellebecq.Best Literary Biography UK
Wodehouse: A Life – Robert McCrum.Best Books I’ve (re)Read in 2005 Regardless of Publishing Date
In Cold Blood – Truman Capote, The Orchid Thief – Susan Orlean, Under the Banner of Heaven – Jon Krakauer.Best Website/Blog USA
My faves this year have been n+1, Yankee Pot Roast, Silliman’s Blog (but, Ron, please write more poetry), Stop Smiling, Slate, and Salon.Best Website/Blog UK
East of the Web, 3am Magazine (even though they have been sitting on a story of mine for 18 months), The Beat, and The Guardian Online.Best Music USA
Get Behind Me Satan – The White Stripes, and Cripple Crow – Devendra Banhart.Best Music UK
I Am A Bird Now – Anthony & The Johnsons, and The EP – The Permissive Society. To tell you the truth, all I’ve been listening to is David Bowie from Space Oddity to Scary Monsters.Best Overheard Conversation/Remark USA
Scenario: JFK airport, British Airways Terminal, as I am walking along concourse to plane.
Middle-aged American man on cellphone: (SHOUTS) Do not co-habit! I repeat: Do not cohabit!Best Overheard Conversation/Remark UK
Scenario: On train on way back from Newcastle. Indian nurse – I was eavesdropping, remember? – talking to an elderly Scottish man.
Woman: Is it cold in Scotland?
Man: Yes, very. We had our first snow on the mountains yesterday.
Woman: How long have you had mountains in Scotland?Best Film USA/UK
You’re not going to believe this but I actually went to the cinema this year. It was a cold and wet Tuesday afternoon, late November 2005, NYC. Lola and I had a few hours to spare before her class and, rather than go to the Cedar Tavern and get shitfaced as is our wont, actually we did go there before and after, we decided to get some food and go to the cinema. What to see? I wanted to see Factotum but it wasn’t on anywhere. Or Capote. I didn’t want to see the new Harry Potter and the Gob of Ire or Rent. So, what intellectual movie did we decide on? The Fassbinder retrospective? The Truffaut Season? Last Year at Marienbad? No. Saw II. It was good. Other people’s recommendation: Broken Flowers.Best Television Programme I Watched in 2005
I don’t watch that much TV: the news, the odd football (soccer) match, the Fashion Channel (oops), but I tuned into Cane Toads, a documentary by Mark Lewis, made in 1988; it’s about the disastrous introduction of cane toads (Bufo marinus) into the Australian ecosystem – funny, intelligent, and damn scary.Round Up
I’d like to thank Kelly Parslow, Sarah Stodola, Kerrie Slavin (merry Xmas), and Charlotte Grant, for their friendship, laughter, and for accompanying me to pubs in New York, Newcastle, Manchester, and London. Thank you to Richard Gregory for asking me to be the writer on Grace. And I would like to say a big thank you to Lola for putting up with me. Two things: a complete withdrawal from the Middle East; and, dear reader, if you want something to snuggle, caress, and electrify your brain –zappety-zap – in 2006, I recommend you read War, Evil, and the End of History – Bernard-Henri Lévy.Click here to read previous Pond Scum columns.
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Click here for Steve Finbow's bio and a list of works published.
© 2005 Me Three
