David Auerbach’s Books of the Year 2019
Waggish 2020-02-14
My top pick is not surprising. Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming, László Krasznahorkai’s self-declared completion to his life’s work, is a monumental portrait of catastrophe, and though published in Hungarian in 2016, it feels absolutely of the moment, a depiction of a scattering world in which everything is devalued and no one has the resources to make sense of things. I wrote about it at great length for Music & Literature, and while I avoid the present trend of deeming any and every work of writing to be essential and crucial, I do think that Krasznahorkai’s quartet of novels will endure.
Otherwise, it seemed a bit of a lean year for books compared to the riches of 2018, and some of the best books below, like the two Laura Ridings from Ugly Duckling Presse, actually date from 2018. It’s wonderful to see another book from the always-brilliant Barbara Maria Stafford, and some very strong archival work in philosophy and classics appeared. (Sara Humphreys’s book on Athenian kinship is magisterial.) Melanie Mitchell’s book on artificial intelligence is perhaps the best survey of the state of the field I have read and is strongly recommended to all.
Many powerful forces encourage us to devalue knowledge, and to devalue even the very pursuit of knowledge. In an age of fear and encroaching chaos, this pressure grows stronger. It is my article of faith that whatever meaning can be gleaned from life nonetheless resides in expanding our epistemological horizons as far as they can go, and confronting the new frontiers even if we tremble in so doing. It is the only antidote to the myopia of lived experience.
Book of the Year
Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming Krasznahorkai, László; Mulzet, Ottilie (Translator) (New Directions)
Literature
Unions: Two Stories Musil, Robert; Grill, Genese (Translator); Grill, Genese (Introduction) (Contra Mundum Press)
And Go Like This: Stories Crowley, John (Small Beer Press)
Malina Bachmann, Ingeborg; Boehm, Philip (Translator); Kushner, Rachel (Introduction) (New Directions)
The Prosecutor Bastos, Augusto Roa; Weldt-Basson, Helene Carol (Translator) (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press)
Convalescent Conversations (Lost Literature) Riding, Laura; Fragopoulos, George (Editor) (Ugly Duckling Presse)
Weeds Xun, Lu; Turner, Matt (Narrator) (Seaweed Salad Editions)
Experts Are Puzzled Riding, Laura; Fragopoulos, George (Editor) (Ugly Duckling Presse)
Dictator Terry, Philip (Carcanet Press Ltd.)
Love in the New Millennium (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) Can Xue; Wasmoen, Annelise Finegan (Translator); Myles, Eileen (Foreword) (Yale University Press)
Bad Words: Selected Short Prose (The German List) Aichinger, Ilse; Wolf, Uljana (Translator); Hawkey, Christian (Translator) (Seagull Books)
All That Is Evident Is Suspect: Readings from the Oulipo: 1963 - 2018 Monk, Ian (Translator); Levin Becker, Daniel (Translator); Duchamp, Marcel (Contributor); Perec, Georges (Contributor) (McSweeney's Publishing)
Necropolis (Russian Library) Khodasevich, Vladislav; Vitali, Sarah (Translator); Bethea, David M. (Introduction) (Columbia University Press)
The Best of R. A. Lafferty Lafferty, R. A. (ORION PUBLISHING GROUP)
The Revenger's Tragedy (Arden Early Modern Drama) Minton, Gretchen E. (Editor); McMullan, Gordon (Series Editor); Jowett, John (Series Editor); Gossett, Suzanne (Series Editor) (The Arden Shakespeare)
The White Devil (Arden Early Modern Drama) Webster, John; Robinson, Benedict S. (Editor); McMullan, Gordon (Series Editor); Jowett, John (Series Editor); Gossett, Suzanne (Series Editor) (The Arden Shakespeare)
Where Reasons End: A Novel Li, Yiyun (Random House)
Japanese Ghost Stories Hearn, Lafcadio; Murray, Paul (Editor); Murray, Paul (Introduction) (Penguin Classics)
The Labyrinth of Tender Force: 166 Love Stories (The German List) Kluge, Alexander; Hoban, Wieland (Translator) (Seagull Books)
World-Changing Rage: News of the Antipodeans (The German List) Baselitz, Georg; Kluge, Alexander; Derbyshire, Katy (Translator) (Seagull Books)
Rock, Paper, Scissors: And Other Stories (New York Review Books Classics) Osipov, Maxim; Dralyuk, Boris (Editor); Fleming, Alex (Translator); Jackson, Anne Marie (Translator); Alexievich, Svetlana (Preface) (NYRB Classics)
The Magic: (October 1961-October 1967) Ten Tales by Roger Zelazny Zelazny, Roger; Delany, Samuel R (Editor); Schweitzer, Darrell (Introduction) (Positronic Publishing)
West-Eastern Divan: Complete, annotated new translation, including Goethe's "Notes and Essays" & the unpublished poems von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang; Ormsby, Eric (Translator) (Gingko Library)
Abel and Cain (New York Review Books Classics) von Rezzori, Gregor; Dollenmayer, David (Translator); Neugroschel, Joachim (Translator); Yarbrough, Marshall (Translator); Cohen, Joshua (Introduction) (NYRB Classics)
Dante's Divine Comedy: Part One: Hell. Decorated and Englished in Prosaic Verse by Alasdair Gray Gray, Alasdair (Canongate Books)
PURGATORY: Dante's Divine Trilogy Part Two. Decorated and Englished in Prosaic Verse by Alasdair Gray Alighieri, Dante; Gray, Alisdair (Translator) (Canongate Books)
Krishna's Lineage: The Harivamsha of Vyasa's Mahabharata Brodbeck, Simon (Translator) (Oxford University Press)
The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison Ellison, Ralph; Callahan, John F. (Editor); Conner, Marc C. (Editor) (Random House)
Humanities
Ribbon of Darkness: Inferencing from the Shadowy Arts and Sciences Stafford, Barbara Maria (University of Chicago Press)
Catastrophizing: Materialism and the Making of Disaster Passannante, Gerard (University of Chicago Press)
A History of Ambiguity Ossa-Richardson, Anthony (Princeton University Press)
Andalus and Sefarad: On Philosophy and Its History in Islamic Spain (Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World) Stroumsa, Sarah (Princeton University Press)
Composition and Cognition: Reflections on Contemporary Music and the Musical Mind Lerdahl, Fred (University of California Press)
Difference and Orientation: An Alexander Kluge Reader (signale|TRANSFER: German Thought in Translation) Kluge, Alexander; Langston, Richard (Editor) (Cornell University Press)
Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs Townsend, Camilla (Oxford University Press)
Cassius Dio (Ancients in Action) Madsen, Jesper Majbom (Bloomsbury Academic)
Music of a Thousand Years: A New History of Persian Musical Traditions Lucas, Ann E. (University of California Press)
The Oulipo and Modern Thought Duncan, Dennis (OUP Oxford)
Sophocles: A Study of His Theater in Its Political and Social Context Jouanna, Jacques; Rendall, Steven (Translator) (Princeton University Press)
A History of Art History Wood, Christopher (Princeton University Press)
I, the Poet: First-Person Form in Horace, Catullus, and Propertius McCarthy, Kathleen (Cornell University Press)
Inside Arabic Music: Arabic Maqam Performance and Theory in the 20th Century Farraj, Johnny; Shumays, Sami Abu (Oxford University Press)
Magic in Ancient Greece and Rome Watson, Lindsay C. (Bloomsbury Academic)
Reading Backwards John Crowley (Subterranean)
A Śabda Reader: Language in Classical Indian Thought (Historical Sourcebooks in Classical Indian Thought) Bronkhorst, Johannes (Editor) (Columbia University Press)
The Essence of Tsongkhapa's Teachings: The Dalai Lama on the Three Principal Aspects of the Path Dalai Lama, His Holiness the; Russell, Jeremy (Editor); Lhakdor, Venerable (Translator) (Wisdom Publications)
Nietzsche's Free Spirit Works: A Dialectical Reading Meyer, Matthew (Cambridge University Press)
Archilochus: The Poems: Introduction, Text, Translation, and Commentary Swift, Laura (Oxford University Press)
Rudolf Carnap: Early Writings: The Collected Works of Rudolf Carnap, Volume 1 Carus, A.W. (Editor); Friedman, Michael (Editor); Kienzler, Wolfgang (Editor); Richardson, Alan (Editor); Schlotter, Sven (Editor) (Oxford University Press)
Frame by Frame: A Materialist Aesthetics of Animated Cartoons Frank, Hannah; Morgan, Daniel (Editor); Gunning, Tom (Foreword) (University of California Press)
Chaucer: A European Life Turner, Marion (Princeton University Press)
How to Be a Pyrrhonist: The Practice and Significance of Pyrrhonian Skepticism Bett, Richard (Cambridge University Press)
Imitating Authors: Plato to Futurity Burrow, Colin (Oxford University Press)
The Cypria (Hellenic Studies Series) Davies, Malcolm (Center for Hellenic Studies)
Networking the Bloc: Experimental Art in Eastern Europe 1965–1981 (The MIT Press) Kemp-Welch, Klara (The MIT Press)
How to Read a Japanese Poem Carter, Steven D. (Columbia University Press)
Knowing Our Limits Ballantyne, Nathan (Oxford University Press)
Brahms's Elegies: The Poetics of Loss in Nineteenth-Century German Culture (Music in Context) Grimes, Nicole (Cambridge University Press)
Romanticism and the Re-Invention of Modern Religion: The Reconciliation of German Idealism and Platonic Realism Hampton, Alexander J. B. (Cambridge University Press)
Kinship in Ancient Athens: Two-Volume Set: An Anthropological Analysis Humphreys, S. C. (Oxford University Press)
Wittgenstein on Logic as the Method of Philosophy: Re-examining the Roots and Development of Analytic Philosophy Kuusela, Oskari (Oxford University Press)
Philosophy, Rhetoric, and Thomas Hobbes Raylor, Timothy (OUP Oxford)
The Autobiography of Solomon Maimon: The Complete Translation Maimon, Solomon; Melamed, Yitzhak Y. (Editor); Socher, Abraham (Editor); Reitter, Paul (Translator); Freudenthal, Gideon (Afterword) (Princeton University Press)
The Roots of Platonism: The Origins and Chief Features of a Philosophical Tradition Dillon, John (Cambridge University Press)
Hermann Cohen: An Intellectual Biography Beiser, Frederick C. (OUP Oxford)
Tragedy, Ritual and Money in Ancient Greece: Selected Essays Seaford, Richard; Bostock, Robert (Editor) (Cambridge University Press)
Ptolemy's Philosophy: Mathematics as a Way of Life Feke, Jacqueline (Princeton University Press)
Science
Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans Mitchell, Melanie (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
The Deep History of Ourselves: The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains LeDoux, Joseph (Viking)
Good Enough: The Tolerance for Mediocrity in Nature and Society Milo, Daniel S. (Harvard University Press)
Mind in Motion: How Action Shapes Thought Tversky, Barbara (Basic Books)
Brains as Engines of Association: An Operating Principle for Nervous Systems Purves, Dale (Oxford University Press)
The Reality of Time Flow: Local Becoming in Modern Physics (The Frontiers Collection) Arthur, Richard T. W. (Springer)
Philosophy of Physics: Quantum Theory (Princeton Foundations of Contemporary Philosophy Book 33) Maudlin, Tim (Princeton University Press)
The Emotional Mind: The Affective Roots of Culture and Cognition Asma, Stephen T. (Harvard University Press)
Becoming Human: A Theory of Ontogeny Tomasello, Michael (Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press)
UNIX: A History and a Memoir Kernighan, Brian ()
This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution Wilson, David Sloan (Pantheon)
Newton the Alchemist: Science, Enigma, and the Quest for Nature's "Secret Fire" Newman, William (Princeton University Press)
Social Sciences
Psychiatry and Its Discontents Scull, Andrew (University of California Press)
The Future of Immortality: Remaking Life and Death in Contemporary Russia (Princeton Studies in Culture and Technology) Bernstein, Anya (Princeton University Press)
Parliament the Mirror of the Nation: Representation, Deliberation, and Democracy in Victorian Britain (Ideas in Context) Conti, Gregory (Cambridge University Press)
World Ordering: A Social Theory of Cognitive Evolution (Cambridge Studies in International Relations) Adler, Emanuel (Cambridge University Press)
Capitalism, Alone: The Future of the System That Rules the World Milanovic, Branko (Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press)
Creatures of Cain: The Hunt for Human Nature in Cold War America Milam, Erika Lorraine (Princeton University Press)
The Ideas That Made America: A Brief History Ratner-Rosenhagen, Jennifer (Oxford University Press)
Why Should We Obey the Law? (Political Theory Today) Klosko, George (Polity)
To See Paris and Die: The Soviet Lives of Western Culture Gilburd, Eleonory (Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press)
Taken for Granted: The Remarkable Power of the Unremarkable (Princeton University Press (Wildguides)) Zerubavel, Eviatar (Princeton University Press)
Economy and Society (2 Volume Set) Weber, Max; Roth, Guenther (Editor); Wittich, Claus (Editor) (University of California Press)
History
Sorting Out the Mixed Economy: The Rise and Fall of Welfare and Developmental States in the Americas (Histories of Economic Life) Offner, Professor Amy C. (Princeton University Press)
The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire Dalrymple, William (Bloomsbury Publishing)
The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans Abulafia, David (Oxford University Press)
The Power of Print in Modern China: Intellectuals and Industrial Publishing from the End of Empire to Maoist State Socialism (Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University) Culp, Robert (Columbia University Press)
Arabs: A 3,000-Year History of Peoples, Tribes and Empires Mackintosh-Smith, Tim (Yale University Press)
Iran Rising: The Survival and Future of the Islamic Republic Saikal, Amin (Princeton University Press)
The Postwar Moment: Progressive Forces in Britain, France, and the United States after World War II Woloch, Isser (Yale University Press)
A History of Twentieth-Century Germany Herbert, Ulrich (Oxford University Press)
The Life of Alcibiades: Dangerous Ambition and the Betrayal of Athens (Cornell Studies in Classical Philology) Romilly, Jacqueline de; Rawlings, Elizabeth Trapnell (Translator) (Cornell University Press)
Escape from Rome: The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World) Scheidel, Walter (Princeton University Press)
Emperor: A New Life of Charles V Parker, Geoffrey (Yale University Press)
Useful Enemies: Islam and The Ottoman Empire in Western Political Thought, 1450-1750 Malcolm, Noel (Oxford University Press)
The Global Age: Europe 1950-2017 (The Penguin History of Europe) Kershaw, Ian (Viking)
Empires of the Mind: The Colonial Past and the Politics of the Present (The Wiles Lectures) Gildea, Robert (Cambridge University Press)
The Bookshop of the World: Making and Trading Books in the Dutch Golden Age Pettegree, Andrew; der Weduwen, Arthur (Yale University Press)
Eric Hobsbawm: A Life in History Evans, Richard J. (Oxford University Press)
Comics
Reincarnation Stories Deitch, Kim (Fantagraphics)
Maggy Garrisson Trondheim, Lewis; Stéphane, Oiry (Illustrator) (SelfMadeHero)
Infinity 8 Vol. 3: The Gospel According to Emma Vehlmann, Fabien; Trondheim, Lewis; Balez, Olivier (Artist) (Magnetic Press)
Clyde Fans Seth (Drawn and Quarterly)
Stay Trondheim, Lewis; Chevillard, Hubert (Artist) (Magnetic Press)
Bezimena Bunjevac, Nina (Fantagraphics)
Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home Krug, Nora (Scribner)
George Herriman’s “Krazy Kat”. The Complete Color Sundays 1935–1944 Braun, Alexander (TASCHEN)
The George Herriman Library: Krazy & Ignatz 1916-1918 Herriman, George (Fantagraphics)
The Arab of the Future 4: A Graphic Memoir of a Childhood in the Middle East, 1987-1992 Sattouf, Riad (Metropolitan Books)
Petit: The Ogre Gods Book One Boulard, Hubert; Gatignol, Bertrand (Artist) (Magnetic Press)
Half-Blood: The Ogre Gods Book Two Boulard, Hubert; Gatignol, Bertrand (Artist) (Magnetic Press)
The Great Man: The Ogre Gods Book Three Hubert; Gatignol, Bertrand (Artist) (Magnetic Press)
Kafkaesque: Fourteen Stories Kuper, Peter (Adapter); Kafka, Franz; Kuper, Peter (Translator) (W. W. Norton & Company)
Heart of Darkness Kuper, Peter (Adapter); Conrad, Joseph; Jasanoff, Maya (Foreword) (W. W. Norton & Company)