TOP TEN BEACH READS

(or How to Win Friends and Influence People) and other blatant attempts to arouse the masses

by M.G. Wood

Editor’s Note: The following list of “beach reads” in no way represents or resembles other “beach read” lists to be found on other book review sites and/or book seller sites like Amazon, Powell’s, or Barnes and Noble. In fact, the following list has absolutely nothing to do with the beach; it’s simply an excuse for Mr. Wood to make a list of some of his favorite books. So, unless you plan on reading these books on a beach littered with hypodermic needles and used condoms, we recommend you just stay home and read in the comfort of your own private space.

#2

IN MEMORIAM TO IDENTITY (1990)

Not since William Burroughs scorched the literary landscape with NAKED LUNCH has a novelist implemented the “cut-up” technique with such style and passion as did Kathy Acker. In novels like DON QUIXOTE and BLOOD AND GUTS IN HIGH SCHOOL, Acker swapped spit with Henry Miller and spat a big gob into the face of humanity by refusing to write by the rules. Acker plagiarized. But, come on, plagiarize is such a harsh word. Acker simply took the skeletal structure of a novel like HUCK FINN and re-interpreted it as urban farce. IN MEMORIAM TO IDENTITY was one of Acker’s last works, as she would die of cancer in 1996. Punk to the core, IN MEMORIAM is a romantic novel about love, sex, child abuse, and self-destruction. 3 characters simultaneously attempting to shed their skin and become something other than who they are, damaged goods. But, like all good Punk Art, Acker doesn’t want you to pity or weep for these characters, she wants you to accept them; she wants you to be swallowed by them. Acker wrote at the height of the public’s fear and loathing of AIDS, and IN MEMORIAM urges you to accept into your heart, someone you would normally fear a simple kiss, much less swallow whole.

#5

LOVE IS A DOG FROM HELL (1977)

This is the collection of poetry that everyone must own in order to call themselves a Bukowski fan. These are poems Bukowski wrote between 1974 and 1977, a golden era for piss and vinegar (or should we call it the golden shower era).

Love dries up / I thought as I walked back to the bathroom / even faster than sperm.

From “the end of a short affair”

#4

MONTGOMERY CLIFT (1978)

Patricia Bosworth opens her definitive Hollywood Bio with a powerful scene of a hobbled and emaciated man, cane in hand, being helped along a city street by the steady hand of a young black man at his side. This damaged man is Montgomery Clift, at age 45. The Greek tragedy that is Clift’s story: from his glorious beginnings as a beautiful and talented teenager stunning his fellow artists with his performances to his revolutionary film acting (that begot Brando and Dean) to his lightning fast descent into drugs and alcohol, climaxing with his sad and desperate life in the shadows of rough sex and self-flagellation.

#10

THE KISS (1998)

What begins with a kiss between a beautiful young woman and an older man in a crowded airport, quickly descends into a nightmarish game of touch and go, as the young woman must come to grips with the fact that she is being pursued by “a man of God”, a “family man”, her father. Kathryn Harrison tells the story of her shocking relationship between she and her father with such honesty and poetry that the reader climbs under the skin of Harrison, aching with sexual confusion and moral ambiguity.

#6

STORY OF THE EYE (1928)

If you think you’ve read shocking stories. If you think there’s nothing that can make your eyes freeze and your jaw drop. If you believe that pornographic literature peaked with the publication of Hustler magazine. Then you’ve never read George Bataille’s 1928 novel about sexual perversity and erotic fantasy played out before God’s dying eyes.

#7

THE GHASTLY ONE (2001)

A fascinating biography chronicling one man’s journey from an underground off-off-off broadway gay theatre scene to an underground film industry built on sex and violence. We sympathize with author McDonough as he both admires and despises the cantankerous auteur, as a misunderstood artist, and a selfish and nasty hack. As challenging as Andy Milligan is, his work as a filmmaker is very intriguing: using his films to express his misogynistic and misanthropic view of life through blood and guts, T and A, and homosexual angst; where John Waters succeeded in pushing the boundaries of good taste, Andy Milligan failed to find an audience for his brand of trash. Apparently Milligan’s films have all but disappeared, and that’s a shame, because you’ll wish you could see just one of his films after reading this honest and tragic life story.

#3

LUNAR PARK (2005)

Bret Easton Ellis is middle-aged. Bret Easton Ellis lives in the suburbs with a wife and kids. And Partick Bateman is calling. After writing one of the most controversial novels in Modern American fiction, AMERICAN PSYCHO, Bret Easton Ellis settles down comfortably into the bosom of the American Dream, and on the night that all of America celebrates the quintessential suburban holiday, Halloween, Ellis becomes haunted by his dead father and his daughter’s doll. Oh, and Patrick Bateman is calling. This is one hell of a fun book.

#1

HOW TO BE GOOD (2001)

Nick Hornby is my favorite novelist. I wait patiently for each new release, pacifying myself with little bits of literary loveliness left by Hornby in the form of book reviews and essays, usually within the pages of the best literary magazine on the planet THE BELIEVER. Hornby is the only modern novelist I’m aware of that can pull off the amazing feat of storytelling with wit and edginess, while at the same time stirring enough emotion as to not drown one in sentiment. If I had to pick just one, I would pick HOW TO BE GOOD. What would you do, as a typical, intelligent cynic, if your significant other became overwhelmed by an intense spiritual conversion, complete with God and praying, church, and the whole bit. I would probably do exactly what Katie does in HOW TO BE GOOD, shit a brick. Funny, insightful, and all together brilliant, HOW TO BE GOOD is Nick Hornby at his most wickedly sharp. Also read HIGH FIDELITY, A LONG WAY DOWN, and ABOUT A BOY.

#8

LIFE AFTER GOD (1994)

While Coupland’s first novel GENERATION X received all the acclaim and attention for being a harbinger of things to come in the 1990's, LIFE AFTER GOD is a far better, more entertaining, and ultimately a more readable book. Like “X”, “GOD” tells the story of 20-somethings trying to find their way in a Postmodern, Ad-friendly, Sexually-repressed, Politically-confused America. But, where “GOD” succeeds and “X” fails, is in Coupland’s precise language and descriptive storytelling; weaving together a series of surreal stories into a semi-linear narrative that leaves the reader with the sense that he or she had just concluded a fun and frantic road trip across America with some pretty cool characters.

#9

A WIDOW FOR ONE YEAR (1999)

You say, “What?” “A John Irving novel?” “The guy that wrote THE CIDER HOUSE RULES and THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP?” And this is when I say, “You’ve seen too many fuckin’ movies ” Because, like most Americans, you have probably never read a John Irving novel, you have only seen the watered-down, over sentimentalized movie treatments (one of which Irving pissed on himself, winning an Oscar writing the sleepy script for CIDER HOUSE). And even though GARP is not a bad movie, it can’t hold a candle to the darker, more sexually liberated novel. But, John Irving’s masterpiece is A WIDOW FOR ONE YEAR, a novel that follows 37 years in the life of Ruth, as she navigates around a womanizing father and a traumatized, but no less sexually adventurous mother. Where her topsy-turvy childhood leads her, is a brilliant and compelling, and jolting journey.

And now after shitting on the movie adaptations of Irving’s novels, I must celebrate one. THE DOOR IN THE FLOOR starring Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger is an absolutely great adaptation of A WIDOW FOR ONE YEAR, focusing on only one part of the novel, rather than attempting to slice and dice the entire work into 2 hours.

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