Ten Authors with Extraordinary Five-Book Runs
(After I made my five-albums and five-movies lists, I began wondering about the authors who could pass a five-books test: that is to say, five consecutive volumes of the very highest caliber, all A’s and no B’s. Many of my favorite writers wouldn’t make the cut, either because of temporary lulls in the quality of their work; because they’ve published too little (Susanna Clarke) or in some cases (César Aira) too much; or because of gaps in their translation record, and thus in my own reading history. Some of these are the usual suspects, or at least my usual suspects, while some are not. I’ve arranged the list alphabetically by author, and in order of the original publication dates, not the English translations.)
Donald Antrim: Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World - The Hundred Brothers - The Verificationist - The Afterlife: A Memoir - The Emerald Light in the Air: Stories
J. G. Ballard: Vermilion Sands - Crash - Concrete Island - High Rise - Low-Flying Aircraft and Other Stories
Octavia Butler: Adulthood Rites - Imago - Parable of the Sower - Bloodchild and Other Stories - Parable of the Talents
Italo Calvino: Marcovaldo or the Seasons in the City - Smog - Cosmicomics - t-zero - The Castle of Crossed Destinies
Donald Harington: Lightning Bug - Some Other Place. The Right Place. - The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - The Cockroaches of Stay More - The Choiring of the Trees
Mark Helprin: Ellis Island and Other Stories - Winter’s Tale - Swan Lake - A Soldier of the Great War - Memoir from Antproof Case
Henning Mankell: Faceless Killers - The Dogs of Riga - The White Lioness - The Man Who Smiled - Sidetracked
Sarah Manguso: Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape - The Two Kinds of Decay - The Guardians: An Elegy - Ongoingness: The End of a Diary - 300 Arguments
Theodore Sturgeon: E Pluribus Unicorn - More Than Human - A Way Home - The Cosmic Rape - A Touch of Strange
Alejandro Zambra: Bonsai - The Private Lives of Trees - Not To Read - Ways of Going Home - My Documents
— June 20, 2021