Where the pandemic/quarantine made it difficult for many people to concentrate, and I certainly understand, I found that I had a bunch of spare time for books. In fact, I sort of needed to pour my attention into something. As the year went on, looking back now, I probably trailed off from my daily news obsession and spent more hours with books. Some of these novels, in particular, kept me laughing while the world was falling apart (Portis, moments in DeLillo, Mooallem), and in general the rhythms of reading helped me make sense of the complete fragmentation of time. It was calming.
My favorite book of the year was Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner, easily. I decided to check out his stuff after reading this feature by A.O. Scott, the first installment of what is slowly becoming an incisive series on unheralded American writers (the second and third installments of which center on Edward P. Jones, also on my 2020 list, and Joy Williams, respectively). Scott wrote: “[Stegner] can’t be enlisted as a partisan in the culture wars, but he isn’t a pacifist either. He’s more like a one-man battlefield, whose dreams of peace — the ‘repose’ and ‘safety’ promised in those titles — express the longings of a tectonically divided civilization.”
Runners-up in my personal favorites include: About a Mountain (which I read in one day, completely mesmerized by the surrealist and controversial blend of journalism and essay), Gringos (the one repeater on my list this year), Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, River of Shadows, Eat the Document, The Meadow, Invisible Man and If Beale Street Could Talk. Just great stuff.
A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter
About a Mountain by John D’Agata
The Ghost Writer by Philip Roth
2019 Best American Magazine Writing ed. by Sid Holt
Draft No. 4 by John McPhee
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion
Zed by Joanna Kavena
They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib
True Grit by Charles Portis
Eat the Document by Dana Spiotta
Enrique’s Journey by Sonia Nazario
Encounters with the Archdruid by John McPhee
The Lifespan of a Fact by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal
Gringos by Charles Portis
This is Chance! by Jon Mooallem
Ornamental by Juan Cardenas
On Anarchism by Noam Chomsky
Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
The Names by Don DeLillo
The Art and Craft of Feature Writing by William Blundell
Stoner by John Williams
Make Noise by Eric Nuzum
Out on the Wire by Jessica Abel
Boom Town by Sam Anderson
Little, Big by John Crowley
Double Negative by Ivan Vladislavic
CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders
In the Heart of the Heart of the Country by William Gass
River of Shadows by Rebecca Solnit
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Fantasyland by Kurt Andersen
Here We Are by Benjamin Taylor
Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson
The Years by Annie Ernaux
Native Son by Richard Wright
Norwood by Charles Portis
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Safekeeping by Abigail Thomas
Black Boy by Richard Wright
The Glass Eye by Jeannie Vanasco
Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
Zero K by Don DeLillo
Litany for the Long Moment by Mary-Kim Arnold
The Silence by Don DeLillo
Barnstorming Ohio by David Giffels
Blackfishing the IUD by Caren Beilin
Gringos by Charles Portis (again!)
Uncle Tom’s Children by Richard Wright
If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin
Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner
Lost in the City by Edward P. Jones
The Meadow by James Galvin
V. by Thomas Pynchon
The Man Who Walked Backward by Ben Montgomery
Remembering Laughter by Wallace Stegner
Sandy 