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Patrick deWitt is the author of the darkly comic novels "The Sisters Brothers" and "French Exit," both of which have been adapted into acclaimed films. His new novel, "The Librarianist," makes a quiet hero of a bookish introvert.
Gargoyles by Thomas Bernhard (1967)
My favorite from Bernhard. Such mean funniness, such funny meanness. The mystery of the Austrian novelist and playwright for me is why I feel love for a man suffering under such graphic contempt for humanity. Well, he's a good companion, even when he's underlining his faults for us, to us. But was he as amused by his disgust as we are? Buy it here.
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Stop-Time by Frank Conroy (1967)
Intelligent, poetic, insightful, bizarre. Conroy's memoir of his fraught childhood and adolescence offers up so many indelible moments, but it's his artful rendering of these moments that positions "Stop-Time" at or near the top of the list of autobiographical writings. Buy it here.
American Genius, a Comedy by Lynne Tillman (2006)
Tillman proves her uncanny brilliance with each book, but it's most clearly on display in this novel. The text is circular, complex, hilarious, hostile, arcane; but what ultimately prevails is a spirit of generosity and weird joy. This book is a document of Tillman's restless, all-seeing mind; it never stands still, and it's a wonder to behold. Buy it here.
Fat City by Leonard Gardner (1969)
A beautiful, admirably plainspoken novel about two boxers whose paths cross in the shabby California town of Stockton in the late 1960s. Both men want more from life than they've been allotted, and both will be disappointed. But the telling of this disappointment is heartbreaking, as is the fact that Gardner never wrote another book. Buy it here.
The Unprofessionals by Julie Hecht (2003)
Hecht is an unsung or under-sung author whose fiction revolves around her own outrage at the free-fall coarsening of mankind. This, her only novel, pairs the sterling comedy this outrage produces alongside a gutting, true-feeling tragedy. Buy it here.
Potted Meat by Steven Dunn (2016)
I came to this strange, moving novel during a stint on a judges' panel, and it stood out for its beauty. The novel follows the child-to-adolescent-to-young-man arc, the backdrop is West Virginia, the circumstances are complicated by poverty and addiction, and the tone pivots from hilarious to harrowing, often in a single sentence. I've returned to "Potted Meat" several times, and my admiration for Dunn's achievement grows with every read. Buy it here.
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