The Review of Contemporary Fiction

My Year 2005: Terrifying Times, by Douglas Messerli
reviewed by Brian Evenson

 

The premise of My Year 2005 is simple enough: it collects reviews and “casual writing” that Messerli did (largely) in the year of 2005 sometimes augmenting them with additional material. It is the first book in a series of such books, each focused on a year. It chronicles not only some of the things that Messerli was reading and reviewing; it also gathers reflections about his youth, about literary figures he has met, and about his experiences in other places (trips to New York for instance). This is not meant to be a deliberately linked collection so much as a picture of the life of one mind over the course of a year. As such, the connections that readers make between essays are as much about them and their own 2005 as they are about Messerli himself. The juxtapositions are sometimes startling: on one side of a series of essays on three Hitchcock films one finds a review of a late-nineteenth-century Norwegian novel and on the other a review of the 2005 movie Good Night, and Good Luck. There is discussion of a revival of a Jane Bowles’ play, reviews of Mati Unt’s Things in the Night and Stacey Levine’s Frances Johnson, a piece on Messerli’s interactions with I. B. Singer while a student and after, discussion of his trip back to a high school reunion, a return to his time spent in the ROTC and his coming out, a joint interview with Charles Bernstein, discussions of Robert Creeley’s death, and many other topics. Throughout, Messerli’s voice is relaxed and open but perceptive, and one comes away from the book with a sense of a sharp mind and an interesting life, as well as with a list of books to read and films to watch. My Year 2005 is an interesting, original, and first-rate piece of cultural history.