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A day ago , by Richard Lutz

Richard Lutz ends another chapter

THIS first week of a new year means scrolling through my annual book list, those that I’ve devoured, politely digested or slogged through like a route march in literary hell. It’s an annual disgorge of titles. Good, bad, indifferent. Some are works of art. Some are exercises in excessive typing. Some I couldn’t put down. Some I didn’t want to so much as toss aside as catapult them to the far side of the moon.

I try to read a book a week. Those without basic maths may want to know that’s 52pa. Sometimes I fail miserably. Other times I burst the ceiling. This year I finished with 59, thanks to a December burst of page turning.

There have been three standout novels. Each uses landscape to paint the mood of the stories. The first is The Optomist’s Daughter. The author is Eudora Welty.

Her life was embedded deep into the earth of Mississippi. It suffuses her work. The story is of a Chicago woman who returns home to the state to bury her father. What the main character finds is she can’t forget nor leave her past. Her life is linked to the Mississippi people, to her family, to the rhythm and inwardness of the deep South. Welty received a Pulitzer Prize for this masterpiece.

A second novel rooted in the author’s home terrain is O Pioneers by Willa Cather. It’s about the endless skies of Nebraska and the roll of its prairies. Yet again, it is a story about a dead father and a daughter. The woman inherits the family farm in this unforgiving Midwest landscape and never relents in the battle to make it a success. And she does.

The author says she didn’t write the book but ‘gave myself up to the pleasure of recapturing people and places.’ She did just that too.

A third book that stands out is Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter (not to be confused with the unrelated Clint Eastwood western Pale Rider). The book is a trio of three American novellas. Two portray the author’s Texas farming roots and the poverty and grit of its rural life.

The third moves north to Colorado to learn about love and loss during the flu epidemic after The First World War. The writing is sparse and elegant. The story is romantic but never cheesy, never overblown. If anything, it is understated. It portrays the land and its western emptiness, the toughness of the world that her characters belong to. Porter too is a Pulitzer Prize winner and summed things up as saying ‘all my past is usable.’

A catalogue of slimeballs…

Other standouts from last year:

The Quiet American by Graham Greene- a telling tale of how the rich west just can’t keep its fingers out of foreign conflicts. In this case it’s French and US intrigues in Vietnam during the 1950’s.

Taste by actor Stanley Tucci- where he weaves his New York autobiography with his love of food (so much so that he includes his Italian recipes…).

Unruly by English tv comic David Mitchell. It’s basically a rollicking catalogue of slimeballs, idiots and madmen who sat on the British throne from the Dark Ages to the end of Elizabeth the First’s reign in 1603. This chronicle of the daft and bloodthirsty is robustly and sometimes rudely told. Take the early medieval civil war between King Stephen and Queen Matilda. Mitchell doesn’t take sides on the murderous anarchy they created. It’s impossible, he writes. And why? Well, he explains: ‘They were both twats.’

Good but no cigar:

Heart of Glasgow: Scots writer Jack House details his city’s history through six streets. It’s as if he’d been in the pub telling great tales.

Clearing Take Off: Film star Dirk Bogarde gets my star billing in this final instalment of his autobiography. An accomplished writer

Angel: English author Elizabeth Taylor tells perfect detailed stories. This one recounts the eponymous life of a Lancashire teen who hits the literary bigtime with her florid romances.

Of course there’s are literary bummers. But why waste time on books that are dreary, unreadable or complete garbage? How about the simple use of words for keeping our streets clean and at the same time raising a smile. That too is good writing. This week, for instance, is cold, snowy, icey, unpleasant. And with this comes the road gritters who work round the clock to make driving safe. In Scotland these heavy duty lorries come with cheeky nicknames painted on their sides. There’s Spready Mercury, Gritney Spears, Melter Skelter, Sleetwood Mac, Skid Vicious.

Not exactly literature. But nicely put nevertheless. And with a cockeyed sense of place too, Our top three authors probably would have had a laugh.