Best Reads of 2018: Fiction

I intentionally read more fiction in 2018. I've grown intrigued by the power of narrative to shape and form us. Early in the year, I finally read Joseph Campbell's seminal work The Hero with a Thousand Faces (The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell). Campbell traces two primary narrative arcs through the literature and mythic lore of the world. First, he describes what he calls the hero's journey. This is the call to adventure that transforms the individual into a person of honor and influence upon the return to his community of origin. Most famously, George Lucas credits Campbell's study of the hero's journey for inspiring the plot of the Star Wars movies.  Second, Campbell studies the Cosmogonic cycle. If the hero's journey focuses on an individual place and growth with in the world, the cosmogonic cycle explores meaning of the universe from its inception to transformation to dissolution. Campbell uses a Freudian and Jungian reading as the means to understand the mythic soul beneath the cultures of the world. Campbell's reading of world literature intrigued me so I began exploring some class works of fiction.

Favorite novels that I read in 2018:
(1) Albert Camus, The Fall. Originally published in 1956, this was Camus final novel before his tragic death in a car accident. Camus uses a second person perspective to craft this novel that unfolds through a series of confessions by the narrator to a French lawyer whom he meets in a bar in Amsterdam. By using this style of direct address, Camus subtly entices the reader into his web. The Fall articulates a post-World War 2, post-faith understanding of human lostness. 

(2) Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (Dover Thrift Editions) Conrad's 1899 novella about a journey deep into the Congo serves as a critique of colonialism with a biting portrayal of the human capacity for evil. Conrad's original remains a potent investigation of the human heart that in the 1970's served as a vehicle for the iconic Vietnam war film "Apocalypse Now." 

(3) George Orwell, Animal Farm. I first read Animal Farm as a senior in high school. It remains one of my favorite novels. Its thinly veiled critique of Marxist Leninism/Stalinism serves as a healthy antiseptic to utopian political fantasies of all eras. I've always found the slogan in the book's closing scene to be an ironic explanation for much that occurs politically/organizationally/socially within alleged systems that espouse equality of outcome: "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others."

(4) Paulo Coelho, The Pilgrimage (Plus). I've long considered a trip to Spain in order to walk the "El Camino de Santiago" ("The Way of St. James"). This is an ancient pilgrimage that ends in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in NW Spain. Coelho pens a story of a man who must face his own demons on the road to the Cathedral. The narrative is imaginative and more fantasy than a realistic portrayal of the pilgrim's path. It's spirituality is less Christian and more Gnostic themed.

(5) Herman Hesse, Siddhartha (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition). This was perhaps my favorite novel that I read in 2018. Hesse's Siddhartha is not about the Buddha. The main character Siddhartha does indeed meet the historic Buddha, but Hesse's focus is a tale of enlightenment told through the lens of a deep reading of Carl Jung. It's timeless message warns of the danger of self-centered spirituality, the allure of riches, power, and sex, and the potential to find oneself fully in unexpected places.

What were your favorite works of fiction that you read this past year?




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