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PopMatters Best of Books 2008: Non-Fiction[6 January 2009] By PopMatters Staff
This disturbing and brilliant collection of prose takes everything you thought you knew about India, grinds it all up into a bitter masala, adds it to water and makes you gag while drinking it all down. A production of Avahan, the India AIDS initiative of the Gates Foundation, it presents the real India to us—the subcontinental juggernaut of over a billion people and numerous languages, dialects, ethnicities, sexualities, and religions. But, it’s also one of the sites of the highest HIV infection rates in the world—approximately 2.5 million people infected with the virus that causes the disease and an untold number with actual, full-blown AIDS. The deepest and darkest secrets in India are those that even people who have lived there don’t talk about because to do so would admit that something was very, very wrong. What makes this enthralling collection so readable is the way it has been structured—an anthology on AIDS in India in the form of essays, memoirs, investigations, and poetry written by journalists and authors of fiction and non-fiction. Despite all these tales, there is hope—in the form of iconoclasts leading their communities towards “the truth” (whatever it is) across India. This book represents as clear a clarion call that has ever been issued on the subject of AIDS—it’s a must-ready for anyone who has an interest in preserving humanity, inside and outside India.  Shyam SriramThe trademark dry wit that made The Giant’s House so enjoyable is much in evidence here, even as McCracken unfolds one of life’s worst possible events. McCracken’s amazing memoir manages to convey the loss of a child in utero without much of the sturm und drangone would expect from such a tale. Much of what McCracken says echoes Ann Hood’s Comfort, another momentous book about losing a child: the particularity of losing a specific child, the feeling, forever after, of being a mother who tallies up more children than the world gives her credit for, the unwitting stupidity of the well-meaning. There is the formerly good friend who, after a three month silence, writes saying she didn’t know what to say. McCracken mentions the many people who saw her and behaved as if nothing had happened. The late, great Carol Shields wrote that happiness is a pane of glass you don’t know you’re looking through until it breaks. Sometimes, there is no picking up the pieces, there is only moving forward with books like McCracken’s in hand to help light your way. Diane LeachI’m usually wary of posthumous collections, especially those that consist of previously-unpublished pieces. Most writers are perfectionists, and if they had left behind material they chose not to publish, they probably had reasons for doing so. And in some ways, Armageddon in Retrospect supports my skepticism: to anyone familiar with Vonnegut’s body of work, many of these stories are obviously (and heartrendingly) unpolished. But the strengths of the collection cover for the individual weaknesses: several of the stories here are on par with Vonnegut’s best work, and they are a welcome balm for those of us who felt his passing keenly. The themes are familiar—Vonnegut was obsessed with war in general and Dresden in particular, and both make numerous appearances. While I recognize that the title story and “Guns Before Butter” are the most accomplished pieces here, I keep coming back to “Happy Birthday, 1951”, the story about an old man trying (and failing) to keep his adopted son from assimilating the violence he sees around him. Also welcome are the handwritten notes, which range from the slightly quirky (“There should have been a secretary of the future”) to the downright grim (“Darwin gave the cachet of science to war and genocide”). The two non-fiction pieces are worth the price of the book. Vonnegut’s speech at an Indianapolis University is, as the man himself was, crass, cantankerous, and funny. And his first letter home after being a prisoner of war—reprinted here, typos and all—is heartbreaking, and clearly shows why the war would haunt Vonnegut and his writing for the rest of his life. Kyle DeasThis is an elliptically beautiful memoir by Coates, who grew up in a crack-ravaged Baltimore neighborhood during the 1980s watching all the dreams of his father—a stridently positive self-publisher of positive African-American tracts—slowly drain away. He’s a bookish kid who seems to have been torn between admiration for his father’s self-made image as an upstanding member of the community, and his desire to be like his brother, who became swiftly adroit in the ways of the street. There is a sense here, rarely captured, of the creeping dislocation that comes as one watches a community literally dissolve away like so much sand under the lapping waves of the decades’ violent crack wars. Coates’ elegant manner of circling around his subject can be distancing at times, but it allows him a sense of gravitas that is too rarely present in stories of the American city. A strange and wonderful thing, this is a book that captures the tragedy of societal disintegration like few others have. Chris BarsantiTrained as an architect before winning acclaim as a photographer, Gabriele Basilico brings less a pictorial eye to his subjects (cities and landscapes) than a curious detachment and eager interest in recording how buildings interact with each other and with the surrounding city or landscape. In other words, he is not drawn to the pretty or the elegiac element inherit in photographing a changing urban landscape, but rather wishes to record as well as to be a witness. Basilico’s photos are like those of a neutral police photographer at a crime scene; they show us what remains after that most cruel of wars, an urban civil war. It is a Dantesque vision of hell after the fire has finally gone out. The charred and bullet scarred remains of the buildings in the center of the city stand empty and almost indifferent, it seems, to the damage they have endured; the streets have been neatly swept of rubble. Human figures seldom appear except in a blur at the edges of half-destroyeds building. Photo after photo shows us the reckless and appalling ruthlessness and destruction wrought by the civil war. Each photograph is an individual tile that is part of a mosaic of ruin. Basilico’s photographs do not seek to praise the mutilated city or to wax elegiac, but rather seek to express a consciousness, in a direct and non-confrontational way, of the collective agony of self-destruction. Carmelo MilitanoThis book begins with a history of the serendipitous forces that came together to make electricity the dominant power source in modern life and therefore changing our lives in so many ways. It then postulates that access to online data is the next life-changing shift. Before long, our computers will have no hard drives at all, and be little more than access points to the cloud of data stored off-site (and who knows where). All of our private photographs, music and files will be stored at data centers run by huge companies like Amazon because that will be cheaper, on both a personal and corporate level, than maintaining the hardware. This book is accessible and thought-provoking, a necessary reading for anyone who cares about where our data is going to be stored and how it will be accessed, now that so many of us are addicted to that very access. Lara KillianIt is no longer possible, nor has it been for some time, to neatly classify AIDS as a ‘gay disease’, although many in their ignorance still do, but it is a disease with a specifically gay cultural history. As Holleran points out, through AIDS “...we have lost a whole generation of gay men, who might otherwise have been valuable mentors to their successors.” AIDS meant the gay community had to grow up fast. It was a young scene, comprised of young people, and as such the psychological tools to make sense of AIDS’ devastation were scarce. And so for a while, the small talk continued. A published writer of fiction, Holleran was, at the time, a columnist for Christopher Street, a gay magazine based in New York. His subject was lifestyle and, for fear of alienating his readership, he sidelined discussion of AIDS in favour of more upbeat topics. As time passed, however, the need for commentary or interpretation on the unfolding events became more pressing than the evasion of the taboo topic. To the tiny degree possible from a literary work, this wonderful text acts as a plug in that gap. As such, this is essential reading. With heartfelt honesty and in beautifully executed prose, each piece considers a theme or experience linked to the early period of the AIDS crisis. Olly ZanettiThere have been a glut of foodie stories in the last few years that have tried to extol the virtues of a particular region or cuisine. Normally such things are consigned to the Sunday magazine section of the daily paper, but occasionally they make it to book form. In this case: John Barlow’s rapturous paean to the pig dishes of northern Spain. A British writer not so long ago relocated to the Iberian peninsula, Barlow has not just a healthy appetite, but a desire to travel throughout his pork-obsessed new home and eat—meal by meal—every single part of the pig. It’s a seemingly simple enough premise, but one that Barlow is able to turn into a witty and learned appreciation of the unique culture of Galicia, the rainy and wind-swept northwest corner of the country where the weather seems as oppressive as the cassoulets are massive and filling, and the people are so pessimistic and ruminative they seem almost friendly” “A straightforward ‘yes’ is just too curt, too bland,” he writes, “A negation, on the other hand, is an invitation to explore the topic further, to muse, to ponder, to seek a solution, or to bemoan the lack of one.” Each experience of the pig conveyed, piece by piece, makes for a delicious and informative morsel. Chris Barsanti
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Comments
Holy shit that’s a lot of male authors!
My whole life I have heard that men are better at math and women are better at words, so why do men overwhelmingly, disconcertingly dominate book lists such as this one offered by Popmatters in 2008?
Comment by sam — January 6, 2009 @ 2:03 pm
That was just the way the dice rolled, but actress Mia Kirschner, you may have noticed, put together the co-operative effort “I Live Here”, and “An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination” was penned by Elizabeth McCracken, two of the most commercial efforts on this list. No gender bias should be implied in any way, shape, or form.
Comment by Rodger Jacobs from Las Vegas, NV — January 6, 2009 @ 2:12 pm
I also left out “Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing.”
Comment by Rodger Jacobs from Las Vegas, NV — January 6, 2009 @ 2:50 pm
Your evidence of no gender bias is to mention the only three books out of twenty four books featuring women authors. Counting the names credited in the author section:
19 books have one man’s name
2 books have one woman’s name
2 books have two men co-authors
1 book has a woman co-author
2 books have gender indeterminate writers
I believe you when you say that you don’t see any gender bias in the selections. The pervasive sidelining of women authors wouldn’t keep happening if men could see what they were doing and were instead conscious of cultural sexism enough to know 3 books with women authors and 21 with men authors is a biased list.
If you rolled unfixed dice 23 times you would be shocked and amazed that you rolled an odd number 21 times and an even number only twice.
The pervasive sidelining of women authors is not served by knee-jerk defensiveness when the extremely skewed list is shown for what it is, but again I will refer you to the existing facts not as I made them but as they stand:
The names of the reviewers are:
Shyam, (a man) four reviews
Kyle, two reviews
Chris, five reviews
Carmelo
Lara
Olly
Rodger
Christopher
Bill, two reviews
Nav (a man) two reviews
Kim (a man)
Erik
Emily
Erika
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but it looks like 21 reviews were by men and 3 were by women. I propose that your dice are fixed, and though you didn’t tamper with them you’re also reluctant to exchange them for a new, unbiased pair. I sincerely hope you take this information as an educational opportunity instead of a chance to shoot the messenger.
Comment by sam — January 6, 2009 @ 5:44 pm
Hi, Sam. Thanks for your concern.
The books covered were rated a “9” or better in 2008 by PopMatters book reviewers over the past year—that’s a staff of boys and girls and boys who will at times be girls and girls who will at times be boys. Well, my point is that PopMatters is run by two women, and those two women and our diverse staff of international writers are open to all interpretations of gender—and a wide range of their expressions from their boy and girl point of views, so long as those expressions are smart and well written.
ALL active PopMatters contributors were invited to suggest and then write on the books they thought the best of 2008.
This is the result. I assure you, there is no gender bias toward book authors, or book reviewers. Rodger Jacobs was, however, invited to write the introduction to both sections—by me. A girl.
P.S. I erroneously attributed the write-up for “An Exact Replica” to a boy. He let me know that he never even read the book. It was just an error on my spreadsheet. So the proper write-attribute is given—to the girl who actually wrote the review.
Best,
Karen Zarker
Sr. Ed., PopMatters
Comment by SysAdmin — January 6, 2009 @ 6:16 pm
Why didn’t Rodger respond to me? He is the one I was conversing with. Are you taking over his role in our conversation because you think having a woman say “That’s not sexist!” carries more weight than when a man says the same thing about the same topic?
Your excuses don’t address the lopsidedness of this book list.
“The books covered were rated a “9” or better in 2008 by PopMatters book reviewers over the past year—that’s a staff of boys and girls (irrelevant wordplay deleted)”
I have acknowledged the existance of both “boys and girls” on your staff. I went so far as to point out the severe lopsidedness of your staff’s output according to gender. Can you acknowledge that the nonfiction book list is disgustingly remiss in acknowledging nonfiction books written by women while giving men far, far more than their fair share of praise?
“a wide range of their expressions from their boy and girl point of views, so long as those expressions are smart and well written.”
If that’s true, then the girls on your staff must be extraordinarily stupid, poor writers for your meritocracy to sift submission wheat from chaff and conclude that men’s work is about ten times as worthy as women’s work as either reviewers or authors.
“I assure you, there is no gender bias toward book authors, or book reviewers.”
I assure you the numbers aren’t lying. Look at them again. The numbers are dramatically skewed. That is a fact.
“Rodger Jacobs was, however, invited to write the introduction to both sections—by me. A girl.”
What’s the purpose of this irrelevant remark beyond being condescending and rude to me? I haven’t talked about and don’t care about the article intro, who runs Popmatters, or your genitals. I was clear about my concerns for the nonfiction book list ignoring women, backed it up with hard evidence that the discrimination I said happened really did happen, and in return you mock me with an infantilizing response. I think we may have inadvertently hit upon one reason why so few ‘girls’ submit book reviews for Popmatters.
Comment by sam — January 6, 2009 @ 7:34 pm
Karen, thank you for adding your views here. I was away from the computer for a few hours and just logged on to see this attempt at a dialogue by Sam.
If Sam cared to make his or her personal auditing of our books list a bit more comprehensive, Sam might have noticed that two books that received the highest marks from me this year were by authors of the female gender, namely Marissa Silver (“The God of War”) and Cynthia Ozick (“Dictation”); Silver’s novel, in fact, was, in my opinion, so worthy of exploration that I wrote a 3,000 word column on the title. Neither novel made my pick for the year end “best of” selection, however, because of flaws in both novels that are worthy of an essay in and of itself (in short, though, “Dictation” had consistency problems and “God of War”, for all its attendant brillance, never rose above being a “coming of age” genre novel).
But the fact remains that two of my favorite novels from last year were written by women.
Comment by Rodger Jacobs from Las Vegas, NV — January 6, 2009 @ 8:47 pm
If I might chime in for just a moment, here are the male-author : female-author breakdowns of the year-end non-fiction selections of some major publications (I’ve indicated when the list is by a single critic):
The New York Times: 4 – 1
The Economist: 42 – 9
Entertainment Weekly: 7 – 3
The New Yorker (James Wood): 5 – 0
Time (Lev Grossman): 6 – 4
This is by no means a scientific sample, but nor is it cherry-picked. It’s just a selection from major publications I read. Clearly we at PopMatters aren’t the only ones who selected a disproportionate number of male authors in our year-end non-fiction feature.
So what do I conclude from this? Well, it’s certainly not lost on me that the two lists by a single critic are both by men, but the Time list is actually the closest to a 50-50 split. Is it possible that there’s a lot more non-fiction published by male authors every year than by women? That could itself be the result of institutionalized sexism, but surely not on the part of us lowly book critics. Perhaps the critics at those publications are as sexist as you think we are, but I’m not convinced. I only counted Wood’s non-fiction picks. Of his fiction choices, three are by men and two are by women. All ten of his choices, though, are by white authors. And yet I see absolutely no reason to conclude that Wood is a racist (indeed he’s probably my favourite literary critic).
Perhaps you could suggest some non-fiction titles by female authors that we missed. I’ll start by suggesting one: The Dark Side by Jane Mayer. I haven’t read it yet, but look forward to doing so soon. I didn’t expect to find it in our year-end feature, though, because we didn’t give it a good enough review, but it is popping up on other lists and I’m a great admirer of Mayer’s journalism.
So what are some other non-fiction books from 2008 by female authors that we missed? I’m always looking for good book suggestions, and I think a list of some would prove to be a useful illustration of the point you’re trying to make (unconvinced as I remain).
Also, just wondering, but how did you know I was a man?
Comment by Nav — January 6, 2009 @ 10:19 pm
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Well-said, Nav, and that reminds me that the protagonist of one of my selections for best fiction novel of the year, “Northline” by Willy Vlautin, is Allison Johnson, a woman.
Furthermore, in my non-fic selection, “Faces of Sunset Boulevard”, a great many of the more remarkable tales in Patrick Ecclesine’s documentary photography essay are women, such as Nay Nay Brown, the young, urban, single black woman struggling by any means available to her to keep her rag tag family afloat in East Hollywood, and Holly Weber, the lingerie model seeking to escape from her past as a male fantasy symbol and move forward as a respected talent. I even remarked upon, in my original review of the book, rock photographer Robin Perine and the doomed ex-convicts and “Partners for Life” Cookie and Smiley. A great many of the books on our list may be written by men but the female perspective is hardly far on the horizon, a point that I think Sam overlooked in his/her heated reaction to a controversy that simply does not exist outside of Sam’s imaginings.
Comment by Rodger Jacobs from Las Vegas, NV — January 6, 2009 @ 10:51 pm
Thank you, Nav, for the sort of contemplative reply I was hoping for when I commented. Your name: I wanted the most accurate info I could get in a short time with limited resources, so I googled the reviewer names, which is also how I learned Kim was a male reviewer.
“(unconvinced as I remain).”
You don’t think, especially as a man, that you might have possibly internalized the sexism of your culture in both conscious and subconscious ways? Or that the male supremacy displayed by this list and replicated for decades on other Best Of nonfiction lists might be anything other than a multi-century crapshoot with the dice just happening to roll odds ten times more than they roll evens, often never rolling even despite hundreds of rolls?
I believe institutionalized male supremacy affects book writers, publishers, and reviewers more than most people are cognizant of in the day to day. That’s why your comparisons with other media are depressingly normal and demonstrate how humongous the problem right under everyone’s noses remains. That’s why no Popmatters staffperson has yet been able to look at the list’s invisibilized women writers and hyper-rewarded men writers and say, “Yep, women nonfiction writers are getting a raw deal here and we should be more mindful of this hidden-in-plain-sight problem. Oh, and thanks for the reminder that we should try to make our website more inviting to women book reviewers.” That would have been decent and progressive.
“And yet I see absolutely no reason to conclude that Wood is a racist”
Why not? Ten books and not one by a man or woman of color when white is the minority race among the world’s English speakers doesn’t strike you as an imbalanced perspective? I pointed out the deleterious results of sexism without calling names, pointing fingers or asking for anything more than some earnest reflection. Like I said earlier, I had hoped people could get beyond knee-jerk defensiveness and feeling personally insulted to grasp the teaching moment before them.
I understand how awareness about gender equality falls by the wayside as a matter of inertia, but I also believe that once the sexism is clearly pointed out that to continue to deny the obvious disparity is willful ignorance. Rodger’s mentioning fiction titles by women he liked is a non sequitur to the actual matter that is the nonfiction list favoring men to women at an astonishing rate. It doesn’t bode well that Karen can’t apologize for her needless smarm and Rodger can’t seem to get past his portrait of me as a delusional, raging maniac too unintelligent to dialog like an adult.
Because you asked, my favorite nonfiction book by a woman this year was Somaly Mam’s “The Road of Lost Innocence: The true story of a Cambodian heroine.” I have known for some years of her charity AFESIP and her brave work rescuing slaves in Cambodia, but learning more of the tortures she survived makes her commitment to stay in the dangerous fray and help others is the most inspirational story I’ve heard in a very long time.
Comment by sam — January 7, 2009 @ 2:39 pm
From Heather Mallick via CBC News:
Last year, an American website, www.WomenTK.com, began tracking the ratio of male to female writers in Harper’s, The Atlantic, The NYT Magazine, The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. Arguably, the ratio should be more or less one to one because that’s what life is like. As it turned out:
Vanity Fair 2.7:1.
The New Yorker 4.1:1.
The Atlantic 3.6:1.
Harper’s 6.9:1 (118 male bylines, only 17 female). Fully six of its 12 issues from September ‘05 to August ‘06 had one or no female writers.
Looks like that’s just the way the numbers skew. I don’t believe PopMatters had much influence on the statistical analysis.
Comment by Rodger Jacobs from Las Vegas, NV — January 7, 2009 @ 2:58 pm
Sam, I find it interesting that you seem more interested in numbers than anything else. For my part, I’m less concerned with an author’s gender than I am with the content of their words, so trying to enact some kind of affirmative action for criticism seems antithetical to the whole aim of critique. Similarly, weighing a “best of” list by the gender or race make-up of the candidates is completely disengenuous.
I will completely grant that under-representation of gender in the publishing world exists, sometimes from blatant discrimination and sometimes from a more subtle bias of sexism. By those admissions, it follows that more books will be published by men, and from that the simple numbers you seem attached to will result in more “quality” books being published by men than women. Is it then beholden on the critic or their publication to try and reverse this trend through activism, or is the critic’s job not simply critique?
Certainly our list isn’t comprehensive or representative of the entire publishing world. Nor is any list beyond subjectivity. But you have approached this discussion with condescension yourself, making some fairly strong claims based on some very shallow evidence. It’s not surprising that a Books staff run by women would bristle at being accused of being disriminatory.
And since equality seems to be your highest ideal, what was your favorite non-fiction book by a man in 2008? Was it better than Mam’s? Would you be discriminating against one or the other if you said you prefered one to the other?
Comment by Patrick Schabe — January 7, 2009 @ 4:46 pm
I’m afraid I contributed to Sam’s numbers crunching game, Patrick, and for that transgression I offer my apologies.
“Reversing the trend through activism” is, of course, an abhorent form of affirmative action that I would not support in any way, shape, or form. Should we be shocked that there are a higher ratio of female writers than male at The Ladies Home Journal?
I still don’t “grasp the teaching moment” that Sam says lays before us here and since Sam can not lay out any credentials for us I’m fairly dubious of any instructor with no pedigree but the one that is being improvised as we go along. The arguments here are legion and are unfocused.
Comment by Rodger Jacobs from Las Vegas, NV — January 7, 2009 @ 5:01 pm
Fair point, Rodger. Without being a jerk and online-outing a commenter who I hope we can at least keep as a reader, I believe that Sam is a member of or is affiliated with a women’s rights activism organization that has excellent aims and goals. To that extent, Sam’s complaints here are understandable. It’s the goals and ethics being advanced here that are fuzzy.
Comment by Patrick Schabe — January 7, 2009 @ 5:37 pm
The funny thing is, Patrick, that in preparing my monthly column I often interface with PR flaks and execs in the publishing world and the ratio is overwhelmingly female; if there is a gender bias in publishing then it’s a downright cannibalistic trend. I don’t suppose Sam is aware of this or would care to hear about it because I’m sure it contradicts the “old boy network” theory. One publisher who did more than any one else in the last 10 years to give the publishing industry a black eye was Judith Regan, head of the Harper Collins spin-off, Regan Books, with her Rupert Murdoch-styled publishing tastes: Jenna Jameson’s faux autiobiography and the O.J. Simpson confessional “If I Did It.” Thank God HC had the sense to give her the boot before she turned the entire industry into a scandal rag.
Comment by Rodger Jacobs from Las Vegas, NV — January 7, 2009 @ 5:49 pm
Wow! Talk about circling the wagons! PM oughta be ashamed - Zarker should resign for her idiocy.
Cheers to Sam for pointing out the obvious.
Comment by zane from berlin — January 9, 2009 @ 12:24 am
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What was the “obvious point” that Sam pointed out? I might have missed it in all her obfuscations and such.
And “circling the wagons”? Well, excuse the hell out of us if we rise to collective defense when our publication is under attack.
And please explain Ms. Zarker’s idiocy to me. You invited this platform so do expand on your thesis. I’m anxious to hear the logic that led you to arrive at that conclusion.
I’m listening ...
Comment by Rodger Jacobs from Las Vegas, NV — January 9, 2009 @ 2:30 am
Whoa, girls! Chill on the PC crap, will you? If Popmatters chose what it covered by what was between the legs of who wrote/played/acted in it, I wouldn’t read it, anymore.
I’m into artists who create with what’s between their ears.
Comment by Susan from Brooklyn — January 9, 2009 @ 8:19 am
And that, hopefully, is the end of that discussion. It may have been “obvious” to some that there are a lack of female writers on the fiction and non-fiction list but when I was looking for a through-line, a narrative thread,—connective tissue, if you will—in the title selections in order to write the introductions, it never would have occurred to me to bring it up because then I would have to ask why Alabanian writers are underrepresented on the list, why there are no good representations from manic depressive alcoholics in memoir form on this list?. And where is the gay community on this list? Not many books by Jewish authors either. I hope that doesn’t hide something frightening in the current zeitgeist. You can see what a can of worms such a question would be to open.
Comment by Rodger Jacobs from Las Vegas, NV — January 9, 2009 @ 8:29 pm