High Five: Novels (or, Five High Fives; or, 5x5)

(In this issue's High Five, author Michael Kimball discusses a matrix of writers.)

(1x5) I'm not going to name any novels by these five writers: William Faulkner, Michael Ondaatje, Samuel Beckett, Cormac McCarthy, and Thomas Bernhard. They all wrote novels that I love, but you've already heard of them or read their novels or decided not to read their novels, and, really, this isn't going to change your mind.

(2x5) And I'm not going to name any books by these five writers: Raymond Carver, Will Eno, Gary Lutz (or his wife, Deb Olin Unferth), Jorge Luis Borges, or Diane Williams. I love their books, but none of them have written novels.

(3x5) I'm not going to name any novels by Kim Chinquee, Leigh Newman, Rachel Sherman, Andy Devine, and Jessica Anya Blau because they haven't been published as of December 24, 2007. But you might want to jot these names down somewhere for future reference.

(4x5) No, I'm going to try to name five novels that you haven't even ever heard of:

(1) Some Instructions, Stanley G. Crawford. It is a novel constructed out of a husband's instructions to his wife about the upkeep of their house and marriage, a father's instructions to his son and his daughter about picking up their room and the general conduct of their lives. And out of these instructions, an unexpected narrative accumulates, a formal ingenuity that continues to amaze me. (After you read and love this, then you might look up his Log of the S.S. The Mrs Unguentine.)

(2) The End of the Story, Lydia Davis. You may have heard of Lydia Davis. She was nominated for the National Book Award last year for Varieties of Disturbance: Stories. I liked the book, but most people who have read Lydia Davis have only read her stories, and the book of hers that I love is The End of the Story, a novel that is reconstructed out of memory and the failings of memory, the passion that begins a relationship and the residuals that are left over from that even years later.

(3) My Happy Life, Lydia Millet. Sticking with novels by people named Lydia, you may have also heard of Lydia Millet. She has received a lot of deserved attention in the last couple of years. But My Happy Life never received the attention it should have when it was published in 2002. It's a genius of a narrative, a life of terrible abuse innocently told by a woman who has been, presumably, abandoned in a derelict mental hospital. It would have been a little difficult for you to find your copy, but luckily, earlier this year, Soft Skull republished it.

(4) Christie Malry's Own Double Entry, B.S. Johnson. My copy has a blurb on it from Samuel Beckett. I have never seen a blurb from Beckett on any other thing that was ever written, but maybe that is my failing. Regardless, that should be enough: Beckett calls him "a most gifted writer." I shouldn't even have to say that it is a novel about a man who keeps a ledger for all of the "credits" and "debits" of his life, both imagined and not, and that this leads to an unexpected and unavoidable end. Also, B.S. Johnson's life came to an unexpected and unavoidable end. (Also see The Unfortunates and House Mother Normal.)

(5) Home Land, Sam Lipsyte. Sam is my friend, but I would put him on this list even if we hadn't come up together. And the only thing that you need to know is that Sam is your friend too. Just pick up Home Land and start reading and pretty soon you will be laughing and you will see what I mean.

(5x5) OK, if you already know the five novels on that list, then here are five more novels: Boxy an Star, Daren King; The High Traverse, Richard Blanchard; The Favourite, Meredith Daneman; Motorman, David Ohle; and, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, Jon McGregor. Finally, if there are any novels, based on the names and titles above, that you think I might like, then please send me a reading list.