Five perfect books.

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1. Voltaire, "Candide"

2. John McPhee, "Oranges"

3. Lucie Brock-Broido, "The Master Letters"

4. Don Novello, "The Lazlo Letters"

5. Donald Barthelme, "Overnight to Many Distant Cities"

Note that there are other books I like better than most of these (I'm a VERY BIG fan of "Infinite Jest" and Rebecca West's "Black Lamb & Grey Falcon," for instance), but they're not perfect; these are. Similarly, the perfect Borges anthology exists only in my head.

― Douglas, Sunday, 7 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

ooh - i'm always on prowl for more fodder for my shelves, and i haven't read any of these. the tricky thing for me is that, unlike naming songs, i almost require a certain level of sloppiness, over- extension, for me to love a book. i suspect most books i'd label "perfect" - meaning airlessness, no way for them to be better at what they're aiming at - i find boring. Well, I should think harder before saying such a rash statement.

― dave k, Sunday, 7 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I don't think I have a perfect book in my collection -- even LOTR has its own angles and problems, though in ways I adore them. I will say that the final fifty pages of Checkmate by Dorothy Dunnett are perfect, though.

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 7 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Interesting. I know what you mean about airlessness, and that's true of one or two of these, but "The Lazlo Letters," in particular, is pretty, uh, airful--milk-through-nose funny, actually.

― Douglas, Sunday, 7 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

of course, as soon as I wrote that, I thought of a personal counterexample - Chesterton's "Man who was Thursday" - which is so efficient and charming in its allegorizing and suitably mysterious in its ending that I can't imagine how to improve it. Also, what I said certainly is only valid for fiction. I haven't read "Oranges" but McPhee has the writing style I've always wanted. Out of curiosity, why these books as opposed to Infinite Jest or something? Also, can anyone think of a piece of fiction longer than, say, 300 pages that they'd call perfect?

― dave k, Sunday, 7 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Also, can anyone think of a piece of fiction longer than, say, 300 pages that they'd call perfect?

Well, The Bible tries, bless its soul.

― Ned Raggett, Monday, 8 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I sort of disagree about Candide, but pointlessly, because I can't think of a good reason why. Barthelme I am close to agreeing with. And I think you're dead on about Borges, although if someone bound "The Library of Babel" as a single (very large print) volume that would have to top the list.

(I realize this sort of thing thoroughly disrupts the logic of these "perfect thing" threads but I cannot even think about the idea of perfect books without talking about Calvino's Cosmicomics. Also maybe Lolita or Harry Mathews's Cigarettes or possibly Perec's Life: A User's Manual, although I'd have to think about that last one for a few years before saying so for sure.)

― Nitsuh, Monday, 8 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Also I'm partial to the undercurrent to responses thus far, which seems to revolve around the idea that books can't and more importantly shouldn't be "perfect," insofar as almost all readers tend to be most taken with works that have intricacies and messiness to be hashed out and dealt with. The reason I always think about Cosmicomics as "perfect" is that it's completely pristine and smooth-running and yet still has loads of depth, which is clearly the main thing that Calvino learned from folk tales.

― Nitsuh, Monday, 8 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Not "Infinite Jest" because the ending is imperfect in multiple senses (as much as I love it), the Marathe/Steeply scenes are lame and overlong, etc. I mean, it's one of my two or three favorite books ever, and there are parts that more than make up for its flaws (when I first read the Hal/Orin/clippers/grief-therapist chapter, I literally fell out of my chair and rolled on the floor clutching my stomach), but there's no getting around how deep the flaws go.

― Douglas, Monday, 8 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

At one point Candide was banned, no? You can actually download it from the next (along with a slew of other banned books, like Fanny).

― nathalie, Monday, 8 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Like the others said, I'm not really a fan of 'perfect' books. See, while a pop song is usually (ideally?) three minutes long or so and therefore 'perfection' can be defined as compactness combined with beauty, novels are meant to be a bit more meaty. There are a lot of perfect short stories, but the only perfect novel I can think of that I like is Breakfast At Tiffany's by Truman Capote.

― Justyn Dillingham, Monday, 8 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Lunch Poems-Mr O'Hara

― anthony, Monday, 8 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

"candide" & the barthelme one are the only ones i've read here but hey any barthelme is GOOD, are there any of his bks that don't really make it, i bet not but if there's a lesser one in yr opinion, well tell what.

― , Monday, 8 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

hey but if i think about it, "Candide", well it's good & all but how'd you get "perfect"? & then i read what everyone else'd said &, umm yeah.

― , Monday, 8 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Barthelme's last nov, 'The King', is a little bit dud - sort've DB by numbers. But he was prob. an ill man by that point.

― Andrew L, Monday, 8 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Wait, wait, yes, Justyn has nailed it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Breakfast at Tiffany's.

― Nitsuh, Monday, 8 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Candide is rubbidge. The musical is much better - the plot works. Frankly Book 2 of Candide is like the last half hour of Training Day - wholly superfluous.

― Pete, Monday, 8 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Every time I cut my toenails I think about that scene, Douglas.

Two perfect books: Gravity's Rainbow and Ulysses.

As long as massive super-novels are done the right way, they can turn many flaws into virtues. (I.e. yes I know there are damnable and intractable sections etc. but I LIKE HAVING THEM THERE TOO.)

― Josh, Monday, 8 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Oh yeah, the McPhee is gd, but if we're talking abt bks derived from New Yorker journalism, then 'Joe Gould's Secret' by Joseph Mitchell wld just, for me, edge 'Oranges' out in the perfection stakes.

― Andrew L, Monday, 8 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

'Of Mice and Men'. Also, Roger Zelazny's 'Lord of Light'.

― thom, Monday, 8 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I think that _Candide_ was the last "literary" book I read that I unreservedly enjoyed.

― Dan Perry, Monday, 8 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm going to treat "perfect" as "perfect (for me)", in which case "Foucault's Pendulum" (which I'm only about halfway through with, so don't mock me if it turns horrible past that point) is perfect. I like how Eco doesn't go out of his way to constantly obfuscate; it's nice to have a "smart" book that actually reads easily.

― Dan I., Monday, 8 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I with Douglas all the way on Candide. I'm surprised at no mention for The Great Gatsby. I'm tempted to suggest Robert Coover's Whatever Happened To Gloomy Gus Of The Chicago Bears. Steve Erickson's Arc d'X (though it's hard to like the title). Maybe Gunter Grass's The Tin Drum. Alan Garner's Red Shift. I want to nominate Muriel Spark, but I can't choose. Joyce Carol Oates' Broke Heart Blues. Sam Delany's Babel-17. Paul Auster's New York Trilogy. Alice Hoffman's Seventh Heaven. Primo Levi's The Wrench (aka The Monkey's Wrench). I'm tempted by Faulkner's The Sound And The Fury.

Trouble is, I'm not sure I'd want to try to defend any of those choices against inevitable disagreements. Can we really not find imperfections in 50,000+ words?

I guess it's more difficult to write a few hundred pages and stay perfect than it is to record three minutes of music. Maybe a better parallel with the perfect song is the perfect story - and we can start with several Borges ones. And a couple by Dick, such as Second Variety and Minority Verdict. Barthelme, Carver, Joyce, Chekhov...

― Martin Skidmore, Monday, 8 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

andew i liked "The King"!

― duane, Monday, 8 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

five months pass...

5 perfect books: black insider - dambudzo marechera (in addition to _candide_), fiskadoro & already dead - denis johnson, book of disquiet - fernado pessoa and a favorite from germany: stier (bull) by ralf rothmann.

― michael zZzz, Tuesday, 17 September 2002 11:05 (twenty-three years ago)

5 perfect modern American stories:

‘Lizard’: Donald Barthelme (60 Stories)
‘What you want to do fine’: Lorrie Moore (Birds of America)
‘The Secret Integration’: Thomas Pynchon (Slow Learner)
‘The Wavemaker Faulters’: George Saunders (Civilwarland in Bad Decline)
‘Juxtaposition’: Mandee Wright (3rd bed)

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Tuesday, 17 September 2002 11:32 (twenty-three years ago)

perfect is a difficult one to come up with a list for. different books are perfect for different things; moods you are in, moods you want to evoke, knowledge you want, etc. there's technical perfection, perfection in character studies, provision of information in the most perfect way, etc. i've only come up with four and only one is fiction.
1. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
2. Netsuke: Fantasy and reality in Japanese miniature sculpture by Joe Earle (MFA, Boston)
3. Ethel and Ernest: A true story by Raymond Briggs
4. The OED

― angela (angela), Tuesday, 17 September 2002 11:56 (twenty-three years ago)

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