Two Dozen from 2011 (Pt. 1)

The winter issue of Poets & Writers highlighted Maine writer Joshua Bodwell's annual annotated "Baker's Dozen" list of top reads for the year. In challenging myself to put together my own Top 13, I found myself struggling to pare it down below 14 -- so I decided to expand instead. Based on a quick perusal of my Goodreads account, this list comprises about one quarter of my 2011 reading. While I re-read and enjoyed some favorite series (by Jim Butcher and Diana Gabaldon) in 2011, the titles that made it to the list were all new reads. In not-quite-but-almost random order:

1 & 2 To address my own pet interests first, I'll list David Damrosch's The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh and Theodore Ziolkowski's Gilgamesh Among Us. The Buried Book was a Christmas present I'd been saving, and it turned out to be a highly readable account of the epic's discovery and translation by George Smith; its excavation and the discovery of Ninevah's palace library by Hormuzd Rassam, the assembling of the library by Ashurbanipal, and the epic's beginnings in ancient Sumer. To mimic an archaeological excavation, Damrosch begins in the mid-19th century and moves back 3,000 years toward what can be surmised of the historical Gilgamesh. Damrosch paints both Smith and Rassam as underdogs in conflict with the British elite; while this approach probably made for good storytelling, I was ridden with sympathetic angst while reading of some of the academic, political, and even legal battles! I was familiar with most of the names, but the book helped put them in context (especially the 19th century Brits Layard, Rawlinson, Smith, Rassam, and Budge). While much of the information about the sources and interpretation of the epic itself can be found in other places, Damrosch brings together insights from experts in various disciplines, and his epilogue on Gilgamesh in the context of the second Gulf War provides a thoughtful conclusion. (It also kind of makes me want to read Saddam Hussein's novel Zabibah and the King, now apparently available in German translation.)

Ziolkowski picks up where Damrosch leaves off, writing a "reception history" of Gilgamesh in literature and popular culture, from its early translation through to the 21st Century. I'm still in first chapters, but it seems that, while the earliest interest in Gilgamesh was based on the flood account and how it reinforced or undermined Biblical authority, later interest was motivated in part by the epic's position outside of (and prior to) Christian tradition in all its Western interpretations. Although Gilgamesh influenced early modernist writers including Rilke and earned a place in Jung's Symbols of Transformation, it has perhaps been brought to the fore more by postmodernists than modernists, due in part to its existential themes, opportunities for exploring issues of gender and sexuality, and fragmentary nature. We'll see how Ziolkowski's argument develops: the highlight is sure to begin on p. 164, where Ziolkoski notes "American poet Hillary Major's 'Gilgamesh Remembers a Dream' (2000)" as a "proud entry" in the tradition of lyric poems inspired by Gilgamesh. After quoting from the poem, Ziolkowski gives a summary analysis: "The poem appears to take the homosexuality for granted--as well as the shortness of human memory--but leaves it open to speculation whether the plant of eternal youth--and by extension the entire visit to Utnapishtim--was real or simply a dream."

3 I was fully prepared to hate The Magicians by Lev Grossman, expecting a satiric exploitation of the fantasy genre with the oh-so-common "postmodern" cast of universally unlikable characters. Instead, I loved it, probably because Grossman's love for his subject (fantasy, yes, most specifically Narnia with a dollop of Hogwarts) shone through so clearly. Grossman undercuts the conventions of the coming-of-age fantasy while also embracing them. Instead of the usual underdog protagonist, Quentin is a privileged nerd; if less time is spent battling evil than exploring (and usually bungling) interpersonal relationships with his fellow magicians, that doesn't mean the stakes are low. The question of what magic is, and of what to do with it in a world where dark lords and evil queens may be hard to find, turns out to be epic worthy.

4 We Don't Know We Don't Know begins with epigraphs from Pliny the Elder and Donald Rumsfeld. Nick Lantz manages to give us timely, socially conscious, intellectually challenging and emotionally engaging poetry that doesn't lose track of the musicality of language itself. He makes us question the nature of knowledge, the role of science, and language's communicative power and purposes. Most of all though, he writes poems that can be read and enjoyed.