Huh?

As we near the end of 2019 we may expect lists of the best and worst things of this or that category that have happened since January 1. The New York Times lets us know which books its editors consider the ten best of the year here.

I don't know if I have any quarrel with any of the inclusions -- I haven't read a one of them -- and I might in fact peek at one or two. The Club sounds interesting, for one. But each entry boasts a quote from the original NYT review, and accompanying Ben Lerner's The Topeka School is this sentence:

Lerner’s exhilarating third novel, after “Leaving the Atocha Station” and “10:04,” rocks an emphatically American amplitude, ranging freely from parenthood to childhood, from toxic masculinity to the niceties of cunnilingus, from Freud’s Oedipus complex to Tupac’s “All Eyez on Me.”

After reading this from Garth Risk Hallberg's review originally published in October, I realized that not only do I not know if I want to read this book, I don't even know what the bleep Hallberg is talking about. I know several of the items he refers to, but he's combined them in ways that make no sense.

You may be thinking that, because I sometimes write little book reviews in this space I might somehow be comparing my work to Mr. Hallberg's. By no means. He writes impenetrable word salad and I riff on airport novels, but ain't no one cuttin' ya boy any checks for this stuff.

Clearly, I am doing it wrong.