In order of completion:
1. “Safe Area Gorazde.” Joe Sacco. A graphic journalistic account of Sacco’s experiences during the Bosnian war. I came upon it while writing about Sacco’s more recent book “Once and Future Riot” (See tcj.com. 1/27/26). It is compelling, if limited, view of a complexity.
2. “Jesus Son.” Denis Johnson. Had read it during the ‘90s. Was led to revisit it after (a) watching “Train Dreams” and (b) reading Johnson’s obit. He was a hellova writer and his life a hellova train wreck.
3. “The Last Samurai.” Helen DeWitt. Probably an excellent novel but seemed to require more time and attention than I was willing to commit to it.
4. “Secondhand Time.” Svetlana Alexievich. Superb. Shattering. Had been left on a free shelf in the café, which demonstrates the class and sensibilities of the clientel.
5. “West Philadelphia: From University City to 52nd Street.” Robert Morris Skaler. My neighborhood. Given to me by someone from there and I gave it to someone who lives there now. Mainly it’s building photos from the early part of the last century. I recognized a few and, architercturally, hardly cared for any
6. “Correction.” Thomas Bernhard. Bernhard’s novels are so obsessively similar, they can be differentiated only in the smallest ways. A middle-aged Austrian first-person narrator, who hates Austria and all things Austrian, goes on for a couple hundred pages without dialogue or chapters. If you develop a taste for them, they can be pleasurably addictive.
7. “Desperadoes.” Ron Hansen. Had read it before but could remember nothing about it. Hansen is a fine – and underappreciated – novelist. I’ve read a number of is books and this one – about the Dalton Brothers – and based on true, sometimes unbelievable events was super.
8. “Vernon Sublutex.” Virgenie Despantes. A friend recommended a novel by Despantes but when I looked her up, this, the first in a trilogy, seemed to be her most highly regarded. It’s set in a world of drugged out, burnt out, sexed out middle-aged French artists, musicians, and film makers, which is so unrelated to my own past or present, it was hard to be any more than curious. Still, I’ll see where vol. 2 goes.
9. “At Wit’s End.” St. Claire McKelway. A re-read of a collection of pieces by “The New Yorker” writer of the ‘40s and ‘50s. He specialized in affectionate profiles of colorful NYC characters – a counterfeiter, an imposter – but his lengthiest recounted of his own nervous breakdowns. In one, while working in the Pacific Theater during WW II, he fingered Admiral Nimitz for being in league with the Japanese. In another, while vacationing in Scotland, he came to believe he had become drawn into a plot to kidnap Eisenhower or Khruschev or both. “Humor,” McKelway wrote, “illuminates the truth.”
10. “A Swim in a Pond in the Rain.” George Saunders. Recommended by another friend. Saunders uses seven 19th century Russian short stories to reflect upon writing and reading. (I got a lot more out of the stories than I did when I read them in college, At this point, I wasn’t going to learn much to benefit my own writing but it was rewarding to see how I’d worked things out and to reflect upon Saunders putting into words thoughts I may never have expressed. “Go forth and do what you please,” was his summative position. Find what it is you do; do it; and accept what it brings you.
So many Bob Levins on the Internet; I'm the Bob Levin who writes.