A Short Canon of Grouchy Books
(“Where is the canon of grouchy books?” Elisa Gabbert asks in her 2022 year-end reading log. What follows are twenty candidates—ten fiction, ten nonfiction—I’d propose for such a canon, arranged alphabetically by author.)
Fiction
Wittgenstein’s Nephew by Thomas Bernhard
Brief Lives of Idiots by Ermanno Cavazzoni
Demolishing Nisard by Éric Chevillard
The Suspended Vocation by Pierre Klossowski
Dear American Airlines by Jonathan Miles
After Claude by Iris Owens
The Evenings by Gerard Reve
Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher
The Fur Hat by Vladimir Voinovich
Galápagos by Kurt Vonnegut
Nonfiction
Tractatus Logico-Suicidalis: On Killing Oneself by Hermann Burger
The Trouble with Being Born by E. M. Cioran
A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother by Rachel Cusk
Sick of Nature by David Gessner
Against Everything: Essays by Mark Greif
Thanks and Sorry and Good Luck: Rejection Letters from the Eyeshot Outbox by Lee Klein
Music in Every Room: Around the World in a Bad Mood by John Krich
Weapons of Mass Seduction: Film Reviews and Other Ravings by Lucius Shepard
Peter Watts Is an Angry Sentient Tumor: Revenge Fantasies and Essays by Peter Watts
Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste by Carl Wilson
— January 1, 2023