The key word in my reading this year was “pulp”: not to say I didn’t read some “serious” literature, but for the most part I was looking for the quick hit, and that meant tearing through a lot of genre paperbacks—adventure, horror, and mystery—especially once summer started and I found myself doing a lot of waiting for kids at music lessons, doctors’ appointments, and the like. I guess you could say that this year I rediscovered the pleasure of skimming, of not having to read every word as closely as if I were writing a graduate thesis on it. Fiction often takes me longer to read than non-fiction because of the labor of imagining every detail as the author describes it, but, welp, not this year.
If I had a reading “project” this year, it was reading all of the (non-film) Indiana Jones tie-in novels; I had read a couple of them before and had a few more on the shelf, but making the decision to track down the rest (a manageable but not trivial task) was a plunge I hadn’t expected to take at the beginning of the year. Despite my affection for the Indiana Jones movies and pulp adventure in general, I grew up with the snob’s suspicion of such tie-ins, a resistance I’ve gradually broken down in recent years as I explored movie adaptations and mass market fiction in general.
So, how were they? Most of them don’t rise to the heights of the best media tie-ins (Max Allan Collins’s Dick Tracy novelization and Matthew Stover’s adaptation of Revenge of the Sith are probably the best I’ve read), but they are diverting, and the best of them feel like authentic extensions of the character and his world that we know from Harrison Ford’s performance in the film series. They are also a neat-looking collection, with matching trade dress and original painted covers by poster maestro Drew Struzan, and most of them feature Indy confronting a legendary supernatural artifact or phenomenon, as you would expect.
Of the three authors who wrote the original twelve installments, Max McCoy’s were my favorite: they feel the most like they could have been movies in the original series, and strike the right balance of action, mystery, and characterization. The two by Martin Caidin (who, among other works, wrote the book upon which The Six Million Dollar Man was based) feel like they might have originally been written about Doc Savage or some other pulp superman and then rebranded as Indiana Jones novels; they’re entertaining enough, but the plots are bizarre and don’t feel much like the character as depicted anywhere else, like hearing a story about someone you know that makes you wonder if you’re thinking of the same person. Rob MacGregor not only wrote the most books (six), but they have the most complex internal continuity, not to mention a mystical bent that, considering these are prequels set in the early to mid-1930s, makes the character’s skepticism of the supernatural as depicted in Raiders of the Lost Ark a little jarring.
The original twelve books were published in the 1990s, following Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, so there are frequent references to Indy’s strained relationship with his father, and side characters such as Marcus Brody and Sallah make appearances. The thirteenth book, Indiana Jones and the Army of the Dead by Steve Perry, was released in 2009 alongside Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and includes that film’s George “Mac” McHale as Indy’s partner in adventure. With another Indiana Jones movie scheduled for 2022, will there be any new tie-in prequels/sidequels? I don’t know, but while researching that question I found that Rob MacGregor wrote another novel, Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings, that was never published, but which he began releasing as audio installments this fall, to be finished in January with a mystery announcement scheduled for February: a new book, or a print publication of this one? Either way, I feel obligated to check it out now.
Another theme emerged in my horror reading: the much-discussed motif of the “final girl,” the (usually virginal) would-be victim who is able to stand up to and escape or dispatch the killer in a slasher film. The concept was codified in Carol J. Clover’s Men, Women, and Chainsaws, but is now deployed self-consciously (witness The Final Girls, the 2015 movie I watched in October, not to be confused with Final Girl, from the same year, and a bunch of other movies and TV episodes with similar titles). The Final Girl Support Group was the first fiction by Grady Hendrix I’ve read, but the novel, which brings together a group of survivors of killing sprees clearly modeled on classic slasher franchises, is definitely the work of someone familiar with the tropes and clichés of the genre, as well as the commentary and criticism surrounding it. By chance I had read a less self-conscious “final girl” novel, Kimberly Rangel’s The Homecoming, earlier in the fall, with its heroine the only survivor of a Ouija board session gone wrong; when she returns home (and to the scene of the crime) years later, many still suspect her of the murders, but the reader knows that it’s actually the work of a serial killer who was executed at the very moment the Ouija board made contact with the spirit realm (did I mention I was looking for pulp?). Even Stephen Graham Jones’ recent The Only Good Indians riffs on the concept with a “Finals Girl,” so-called because she’s a basketball prodigy, but, well, don’t be surprised by where she ends up at the end of the book. (Jones’s latest novel, My Heart Is a Chainsaw, looks to be similarly self-referential, as it deals with a horror fan who ends up putting her knowledge to practical use, but I suppose it’s as much a matter of writers starting out as fans as it is the ubiquity of metanarrative concepts being popular; in any case, I look forward to reading it.)
January
The Boys of Sheriff Street, Jerome Charyn and Jacques de Loustal: French graphic novel, translated and published by Dover, of all companies
Samurai Executioner Vol. 4: Portrait of Death and Vol. 10: A Couple of Jitte, Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima: excellent manga from the creators of Lone Wolf and Cub, set in the same historical era
Winter’s Tale, Mark Helprin: a masterpiece
February
Reid Fleming, World’s Toughest Milkman in Rogue to Riches, David Boswell (reread)
The Living Talmud: The Wisdom of the Fathers and its classical commentaries, selected and translated with an essay by Judah Goldin
Medieval Ghost Stories, Andrew Joynes
March
The Night Ocean, Paul La Farge
Wonder Woman: The Complete Dailies 1944-1945, William Moulton Marston and H. G. Peter
The Which Way Tree, Elizabeth Crook
May
Kanako el Kananam: Aventuroj en la Ĝangalo de Novgvineo, Kenneth G. Linton: As I mentioned last year, I began studying Esperanto in 2020, and this memoir, by an Australian soldier stationed in New Guinea after World War II, is so far the only full-length book I’ve read in the language. It took me a while.
The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip, George Saunders, illustrated by Lane Smith: another one of those “postmodern author’s children’s books for adults,” fits on the shelf next to Donald Barthelme’s The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine, but not as good
The Phantom of the Opera, Gaston Leroux: the book that got me in the pulp mood for the summer
June
Indiana Jones and the Peril at Delphi, Rob MacGregor
Indiana Jones and the Dance of the Giants, Rob MacGregor
Cold Cash, Gaylord Dold
Indiana Jones and the Seven Veils, Rob MacGregor
Indiana Jones and the Genesis Deluge, Rob MacGregor
July
Indiana Jones and the Unicorn’s Legacy, Rob MacGregor
Indiana Jones and the Interior World, Rob MacGregor (reread)
The Homecoming, Kimberly Rangel
August
Avengers: The Complete Celestial Madonna Saga, Steve Englehart, John Buscema, Jorge Santamaría, et al
Faerie Tale, Raymond E. Feist
Indiana Jones and the Sky Pirates, Martin Caidin
Indiana Jones and the White Witch, Martin Caidin
King Kong, Edgar Wallace and Merian C. Cooper, novelization by Delos W. Lovelace
September
Indiana Jones and the Philosopher’s Stone, Max McCoy
Dangerous Girls, R. L. Stine
The Yellow Room, Mary Roberts Rinehart: I know, don’t judge by the cover, but I expected more of a Gothic romance than this turned out to be. Wouldn’t you?
Indiana Jones and the Dinosaur Eggs, Max McCoy
Indiana Jones and the Hollow Earth, Max McCoy (reread)
October
Indiana Jones and the Secret of the Sphinx, Max McCoy
The Final Girl Support Group, Grady Hendrix
The Death Freak, “John Luckless” who is also known as Clifford Irving and Herbert Burkholz: I found this at Goodwill and immediately had to read it, and I guess in this case the cover turned out to be pretty accurate: an only-in-the-’70s satirical spy thriller, sort of like a James Bond novel if Q were the hero.
Indiana Jones and the Army of the Dead, Steve Perry
November
The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco (trans. William Weaver)
December
The Best American Noir of the Century, ed. James Ellroy and Otto Penzler: a 700+ page doorstop that I’ve had for a while, but once I started reading it I wished I’d started it sooner
Flying Too High (A Phryne Fisher Mystery), Kerry Greenwood
The Only Good Indians, Stephen Graham Jones
That’s it for 2021: I hope to post more consistently in 2022, but whatever happens, have a Happy New Year!
Medleyana 