Most Useful Information January 2024: 2023 Recap Edition

Hindsight is 2023. Stuff I read.

Good morning. Happy New Year. I hope this finds you well.

Most publications put out end of the year “best of” lists in early-mid December so you can look at the list and buy things from the list for yourself or others for Christmas. Here at Most Useful Information we don’t believe people should ever buy anything. So the holidays are done, temptations to purchase purged, and here’s a “best of” books I read in 2023. Followed by a list of everything I read this year. A bunch of stuff wasn’t written about in any Most Useful Information, so take a look. If you want to read something from the list, get it from a library.

Later this month I’ll have a podcast where I talk about The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante. Next month there will be a normal newsletter plus surprise. Get stoked. 

What was your favorite book you read in 2023?

My favorite books of 2023.

The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas

I wrote about The Ice Palace in April. Nothing I write now will improve on what I wrote then. Start to finish I’ve read The Ice Palace more than any other book. When people think of Norwegian writers these days they think of Knut Hamsun, Karl Ove Knausgaard, and now, maybe, Jon Fosse. They should think of Vesaas. He’s the best.

The Basketball Diaries by Jim Carroll

I wrote about The Basketball Diaries in July. Nothing I write now will improve on what I wrote then. It’s a tragic book. Also, unmistakably cool. Jim Carroll lived a crazy life, which makes the book wild. But the book would be nothing without Carroll’s style and humor. 

Junk, Tommy Pico

I wrote about Junk last month. Nothing I write now will improve on what I wrote then. Easily one of the funniest books I read in 2023. So funny I read it twice. Pico has a bunch of books, so read this one and read the others too. I think he wrote on Reservation Dogs and Rutherford Falls, so you can watch those too, if you like TV shows.

Muscle: Confessions of an Unlikely Bodybuilder by Samuel Wilson Fussell

I wrote about Muscle in September. Nothing I write now will improve on what I wrote then. Muscle sent me down a rabbit hole of bodybuilding literature. Last week I finished a book of short stories called The Lonesome Bodybuilder. The title story is about a housewife who sees her husband watching a boxing match and decides she wants to get muscles like a boxer. It’s a pretty good story. The central theme with most all bodybuilding lit is loneliness and desire for control. Bodybuilding is inherently funny and always kind of campy, but it’s also sad, I think.

Documentarity: Evidence, Ontology, and Inscription by Ron Day

If you read Most Useful Information regularly you’ll know that I mostly read novels. Documentarity isn’t a novel. Ron Day taught the first class I took at library school. My second year at library school I was the treasurer for the “progressive librarians guild.” Ron Day was the advisor. Before throwing a pizza party I needed him to sign a piece of paper. So one afternoon I saw him sitting outside the library eating carrots and hummus. He signed the piece of paper with hummus smeared on his face. Easily top two professors I’ve ever had in terms of how much I respect and admire them. 

Ron Day writes about the metaphysics of information. Whatever that means. Documentarity is a word coined by Day and a word word processors refuse to leave un-autocorrected. It’s the process by which “entities” become evident. An entity becomes evident through evidence. Evidence is a document or documents in which the entity is represented. An antelope is an entity. Antelopes are evident - that is to say, we know that they exist - through photographs, encyclopedia entries, David Attenborough films, all of which are documents representing antelopes. It’s possible to know antelopes without ever experiencing an antelope because of the documents representing antelopes. Documents require someone or something to interpret them. Day looks at both humans and machines and how they interpret documents and how interpretations have changed over time. We have gone from a tradition of “strong documentarity” to “weak documentarity.” Strong documentarity assumes ideal types that are sifted through to find evidence. We have a concept for antelope or ideal of antelope and that ideal is how we understand and interpret photographs, encyclopedia entries and David Attenborough films about antelopes. If we encounter a pink antelope we know that is weird because of its deviation from our ideal concept of antelope. This is Plato. It is also Paul Otlet, a French librarian/information scientist from the early 20th century. Weak documentarity assumes experience of particulars is evidence in itself and there is no need for an overarching taxonomy. I’ve seen an antelope, or a picture of an antelope and that is proof enough that antelopes exist. I don’t need a predetermined concept or ideal for antelope.

Or in another example from my own life that might help explain how this stuff relates to our every day existences: I used to have an instagram. Also, I used to live in the pacific northwest. As a result most of my friends and the people I followed on instagram were from the pacific northwest. Instagram of course tracks my data. Data is made of particulars. People like Mark Zuckerberg decide certain particulars are representative of the whole. Many of the people I followed lived in Seattle. Many of the photos I liked were from or around Seattle. The number of photos I liked connected to Seattle was a meaningful particular to instagram. From that particular it assumed I lived in Seattle. So all of the ads I saw on instagram were for things in Seattle. At the time I lived in Morgantown, West Virginia, so the ads were useless. Mark Zuckerberg took the representation of a particular from my identity and used it as evidence of my entire identity and tailoring his ads accordingly. Mark Zuckerberg is a chump.

Ron Day goes all over the place. Information science, literary studies, animal studies, philosophy of language, human rights law, semiotics, and more. When reading him I feel what he’s writing about is urgent and important and connects to how I live my life and no one else is saying what he’s saying. Documentarity and his last book Indexing It All amount to compelling full throated defenses of the humanities. If I could only understand what the fuck he’s talking about. He doesn’t hold your hand at all. It’s difficult to follow and understand what’s going on. But that’s the point of reading and learning. If I immediately understand, why read it in the first place?

Lori and Joe, Amy Arnold

I didn’t write about Lori and Joe this year. It’s a small book by the author of one of my favorite contemporary novels, Slip of a Fish. Slip of a Fish is a tough book to recommend to people because of how dark it gets. Lori and Joe doesn’t get as dark, or at least not in the same way. Lori and Joe are married. Lori wakes up one morning and Joe is dead. She goes for a foggy walk and recalls life with Joe and a neighboring family that lived next to them years ago. Not much plot, but very moving nonetheless. It’s all sort of stream of consciousness. Lori is a weirdo and makes me uncomfortable sometimes. The most Jon Fosse-like book written by a non-Jon Fosse person. 

Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa Thiong’o

I didn’t write about Wizard of the Crow, which is stupid because it is one of the best novels I’ve read in years. It’s about a country in Africa with a despotic ruler only known as The Ruler. After his wife asks him to stop having affairs with underage girls he builds an elaborate prison for her to live in. No one is allowed to ever mention her again. He wants to build a tower into outer space, taller than the tower of babel. He needs funding from American investors, but American investors have qualms with some of his human rights violations. He needs to make the country look good. At the same time there’s a vagabond who set up business as a wizard healing people. Lines form outside the wizard’s home and these lines become disorderly, making the country look bad. Things spiral from there. It’s a huge book that dabbles in folklore and, I guess, magical realism, evoking Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Salman Rushdie. But even if you don’t like those guys (not the biggest Rushdie fan here) you’ll probably still enjoy Wizard of the Crow. It’s so good.

A friend, David Golumbia, recommended this book. He died in 2023. On earth there aren’t many greats. Now there’s one fewer. I hope he’s hanging out with Pee Wee. 

Every book I read in 2023 in the order I read them:

The Other Name: Septology I-II, Jon Fosse

The Ice Palace, Tarjei Vesaas

Telephone, Percival Everett

I Is Another: Septology III-V, Jon Fosse

Junk, Tommy Pico

William Softkey and the Purple Spider, cf

A New Name: Septology VI-VII, Jon Fosse

Young Skins, Colin Barrett

The Basketball Diaries, Jim Carroll

Asylum Piece, Anna Kavan

The Rabbit Hutch, Tess Gunty

Literature and Evil, Georges Bataille

Hunger, Knut Hamsun

Intimacies, Katie Kitamura

Razorblade Tears, S.A. Cosby

Ketchup, Sam Pink

Witch Piss, Sam Pink

Blood and Guts in High School, Kathy Acker

Muscle: Confessions of an Unlikely Bodybuilder, Samuel Wilson Fussell

Feed, Tommy Pico

My Father’s Diet, Adrian Nathan West

Love, Hanne Ørstavik

The Hero’s Body, William Giraldi

The Longshot, Katie Kitamura

Still No Word from You: Notes in the Margin, Peter Orner

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, Yukon Mishima

Cousins, Aurora Venturini

Body, Harry Crews

Sun and Steel: His Personal Testament on Art, Action, and Ritual Death, Yukio Mishima

Documentarity: Evidence, Ontology, and Inscription, Ron Day

Forced Entries: The Downtown Diaries: 1971–973, Jim Carroll

The Quiet American, Graham Greene

Nazi Literature in the Americas, Roberto Bolano

The Lying Life of Adults, Elena Ferrante

Maske: Thaery, Jack Vance

Wizard of the Crow, Ngugi wa Thiong’o

Aliens and Anorexia, Chris Kraus

Margery Kempe, Robert Glück

Lori and Joe, Amy Arnold

The Garbage Times/White Ibis, Sam Pink

Monica, Daniel Clowes

The Quaker, Liam Mcilvanney

My Sister the Serial Killer, Oyinkan Braithwaite

Fantastic Fictions, Sam Pink

History of Shit, Dominique Laporte

Nevada, Imogen Binnie

Junk, Tommy Pico

Void of Course, Jim Carroll

Mystic Debris, Justin Gradin

Ice, Anna Kavan

Person, Sam Pink

The Lonesome Bodybuilder, Yukiko Motoya