A Year in Reading: David Gilbert

I am not the first to say this, but let me say this nonetheless: Thank God for the NYRB series of reissued books. This year, I was blown away by the gnomic brilliance of Speedboat by Renata Adler, which reminded me of Nathanael West, whom I then re-read and re-loved all over again, which got me into a Stanley Elkin kind of mood, so hello to The Dick Gibson Show and its sneaky joy with that particular brand of American language, and speaking of language, the opening of The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner was like a fever dream of delight, so after that I had to dip back into Pafko at the Wall by Don DeLillo, the standard bearer of sustained openings, after which I wisely — and in some cases unwisely — read the first book of My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgaard and I fear for its minute infections, unlike Stoner by John Williams, downed a month later, which is such a quiet yet profound thrill in its distillation of a nothing special life that it seems inimitable and totally beyond me, like William Maxwell’s So Long, See You Tomorrow, which I should read again, maybe next year — oh, and P.S. I watched my 11-year-old son take in ‘Salem’s Lot by Stephen King, pure delight, and my 10-year-old daughter puts in her vote for Wonder by R.J. Palacio.

David Gilbert is the author of the novels And Sons and The Normals, as well as the story collection Remote Feed. His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, GQ, and Bomb. He lives in New York with his wife and three children.