Benedict Nguyễn’s Reading List
The author of the forthcoming 'Hot Girls with Balls' shares recent indie press book recommendations based on your favorite sport.
Everything is a sport before anyone @’s me! Three of these five selections hardly require physical movement because sport is just playing into some kind of game. Here are some recent books from indie presses (mighty underdogs in the publishing rat race, if you will) whose narrative structures and/or main character dynamics evoke the vibe of some of my favorite athletic activities. It’s not super literal, but it’s not that slanted either, okay?
Letting someone win? To Have and Have More by Sanibel - 8th Note Press
Be a good sport about it! If you’re not doing it to redeem points or lash out later, this can actually be a very noble move. When your incompetent boss is so far beneath you, it’s both self-preservation and a public service. In Sanibel’s To Have and Have More, prep school students wield their status symbols and make power plays with Macchiavellian blitheness. I would not survive an hour in this arena. When two protagonists become friends, the admiration is not mutual. Can their alliance cause an upset in the school social standings? This satire delights in its every sophisticated scheme.
Group fitness? Outside Women by Roohi Choudry - University Press of Kentucky
Gathering in a mirrored room to perform the same sports moves is a kind of meeting that should not be replaced by an email. In that recursive exchange between a facilitator’s structure and one’s bodily inclinations, one has to determine how far to push. In the alternating perspectives in Roohi Choudry’s elastic Outside Women, the two titular protagonists’ worlds bookend a whole century. The reader recalibrates the rhythm of time in each character’s timeline, from the rush of fleeing to the restlessness of waiting to flee. As characters breathe down each others’ necks in Choudry’s narrative interval training, the dynamic tension might snap at any moment.
Gossiping? Worthy of the Event by Vivan Blaxell - LittlePuss Press
Whether it’s that guy you vaguely know from that thing or a recurring nuisance on the scene, keeping tabs on people is exertion! Vivian Blaxell’s Worthy of the Event ricochets from intellectual history to her personal history with fluid agility. Like the best of gossip, Blaxell doesn’t try to make an argument so much as spin a carefully woven series of astute observations in a most compelling yarn.
Measured in hours? Anam by André Dao - Kaya Press
Whether a 10k or a long commute, the real trick of endurance work is sitting with one’s thoughts. Lapses of attention and boredom will always drift over. In André Dao’s transcontinental and transgenerational Anam, most of the action takes place in the protagonist’s head. A Vietnamese academic and writer tries to piece together archive and memory alongside his own derision and auto-derision (yes, of course, France is involved) to make sense of his grandfather’s imprisonment.
Romance?! That’s the very nature of Saturn by Michy Woodward - Bottlecap Press
Looking for your endgame? Did you know that marriage is a marathon, not a sprint? One might say love isn’t a sport of competition but patience. I was at Hive Mind Books for Jeanne Thornton’s launch of A/S/L and my friend Sophia spotted the pink cover of Michy Woodward’s 16-page chapbook That’s the very nature of Saturn. And then, our jaws dropped at the table of contents, an amazing poem in itself. Woodward’s poems flit between the sweetness of love and its inevitable demise, casting ender regard towards nostalgia and the next life-ruining devotion, sure to come. In any sport, you gotta learn from your mistakes and wipe that slate clean.