The Year That Fell Apart

P. Scott's "Best of" 2024

“Palmetto Poem” by Sopa de Gooch

And if the world’s too late to save
I’ll plant a flower on its grave.

• Attila József, translated by Lloyd Schwartz

Goodbye, 2024.

If you haven’t heard, my family and I moved from Miami to Oak Park, IL, so I am now learning “coats.” We miss Miami, mostly its people, but we’re happy and settled in.

I’m currently working on three manuscripts:

• A book of poems titled, “Self-Portrait as the ‘i’ in Florida.” It’s done. I’m just shopping it around.

• A book of essays about Miami, due to my publisher, University Press of Florida, in the spring.

• An anthology of contemporary Florida writers, co-edited with novelist Kristen Arnett, also due to come out from University Press of Florida. Submissions close on January 15. If you’re a Florida writer, send us something!

On to the “best of” lists. Here’s your menu:

• Best Family Photos

• Books

• TV shows / Movies

• Best Kid Video

• Poems

• Songs

Best family photos

Books

I read 51 books in 2024, which, considering we moved across the country and I had back surgery, isn’t too bad. Here are my favorites, in the order I read them.

Note: Not all these books came out this year, and there are other books that came out this year that I read advanced copies of in 2023 so they won’t appear here.

The Wren The Wren - Anne Enright
Enright is Irish, so naturally, she’s great at writing. (It’s in the brown bread.)

There’s Always This Year - Hanif Abdurraqib
On the surface, this is a book about LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers winning the 2016 NBA Championship, but it’s also an autobiography, a meditation on grief, and a love letter to Ohio.

Wandering Stars - Tommy Orange
This is Tommy’s second novel, and it revisits a few characters from his debut There, There, creating a neat little bridge between the two. I loved There, There, but the scope of this one was greater, and more powerful to me.

Great Expectations - Vinson Cunningham
The plot centers around a young staffer on Obama’s first campaign, which adds a kind of historical sparkle to a quiet narrative, but the reason to read this book is to listen to Cunningham’s discursive meditations on theology, basketball, and anything else.

The Anthologist - Nicholson Baker
I don’t know why but I always thought Baker was the same writer as the guy who wrote The Notebook. He’s not.

Because of Winn-Dixie - Kate DiCamillo
Oh, sure, this is a book about a dog written for middle schoolers, but let me tell you, this is as good a literary novel as you’ll find.

James - Percival Everett
Erasure - Percival Everett
We are in the Era of Everett. Took us a while, didn’t it?

Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
I was never assigned this book at any level of my schooling in South Florida.

Real Americans - Rachel Khong
Told in three parts by three different narrators, the first section feels kind of like a literary romance novel right up until the last page, when the story takes an incredible and breathtaking turn. I enjoyed that first section, but I was riveted by the final two.

Adam - Gboyega Odubanjo
More on this book in the “Poems” section.

What Belongs to You - Garth Greenwell
A young professor, teaching English in Bulgaria, falls in love? lust? love-lust? with a younger man. Greenwell’s sentences dramatize the narrator’s consciousness, which moves through the city and the relationship with seamless and beguiling grace.

Piranesi - Susana Clarke
The thing about being lost in a labyrinth is that, if you can’t remember entering, the labyrinth may not appear to you to be a labyrinth. Clarke uses this simple premise to create an original world whose connection to our world only becomes apparent toward the end of the book.

Giovani’s Room - James Baldwin
I’d never read any of Baldwin’s fiction. That was a mistake.

Faithful Ruslan - Georgi Vladimov
Apparently, George Saunders re-reads this hard-to-find Russian novel every year. The whole story is told from the perspective of a guard dog in a prison camp, which seems like it would feel limiting but instead the dog’s miscomprehension of what’s happening around him becomes an engine for teasing out the folly of humans.

The White Book - Han Kang
A short, gorgeous meditation on the color white by this year’s Nobel Prize winner in literature.

The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford - Jean Stafford
Stafford’s story “In the Zoo” (originally printed in The New Yorker in 1953) is as good as short fiction gets.

Fire Eater: A Translator’s Theology - Chloe Garcia Roberts
Beautiful, meditative, and intellectually rigorous book of short essays.

Rejection - Tony Tulathimutte
We all need to get offline, asap.

Shows & Movies

In no particular order…the vast majority came out this year.

Fargo, Season 5
Traditionally one of my favorite shows, Fargo is a serial, born from the Coen Brothers movie, in which each season exists on its own but is connected to the larger universe. Season 4 was a disappointment, but the show rounded back into form this year, with John Hamm, Juno Temple, and Sam Spruell headlining a great cast. Most importantly, the show got weird and mystical again, which has always been what sets it apart from the million other true crime-y shows out there.

True Detective, Season 4
If you know me, you know I believe T.D. Season 2 is the worst season of television ever made, absolute schlock that behaved like it was Shakespeare. Out of respect for Season 1, I watched Season 3, which was at least forgivably bad. Even Season 1 (if we’re keeping it 100) had major problems (namely, a ton of dropped plot points) that were smoothed over by Cary Fukanaga’s directing and Matthew McConaughey whizzing fastballs. So…hot take…I think S4 is the best True Detective yet. The plot made sense for once. Performances were great. Cinematography was wonderful. And, perhaps most importantly, instead of being a fake-out the supernatural elements were fully integrated into the narrative.

What We Do in the Shadows, Season 6
I’m so sad this show is over now, but I get the feeling they did everything they wanted to do. For me, it’s been the most consistently funny show for the last few years. Every casting decision nailed. Incredible writing. We’ll always have Matthew Berry pronouncing everything the wrong way.

Hacks, Season 3
This show has been on my “best of” all three seasons. To me, it’s perfect. Jean Smart is an absolute monster of a talent who had to wait basically her whole career to get the perfect role for her. (I also recommend Smart’s co-star Hannah Einbender’s stand up special, Everything Must Go.)

Baby Reindeer
I’m actually shocked how much I loved this show. I’m famous in my house for being unable to make it through uncomfortable or awkward moments on screen, and Baby Reindeer is basically that for the entire show. “You thought the last episode was hard to watch? Check out this one!” But I found Richard Gadd and Jessica Gunning too compelling to turn away. Their chemistry is unlike anything I’ve ever seen: electric but also violent but also sweet? If you can stand it, I recommend it.

English Teacher
Brian Jordan Alvarez is going to be a huge star.

A Man on the Inside
Michael Schur (The Office / Parks & Rec / Good Place) tackles a subject that hardly anyone wants to touch: how do people at the end of their lives make meaning, especially in the wake of loss? Oh, and it’s a comedy! And a spy show!

Somebody Somewhere
We just started watching this, so I’ve only seen S1, but it’s my new favorite show. Does for Manhattan, Kansas what Manhattan did for Manhattan. (This joke doesn’t work.)

It’s What’s Inside
I watch fewer and fewer films, not because I don’t want to but because I watch so many kids’ movies that I have no time for any other type. I’m not sure the filmmakers of It’s What’s Inside totally stuck the landing, but the concept is genius.

Say Nothing
I know Patrick Radden Keefe is trying to tell me otherwise, but being young and a member of the Irish Republican Army looks cool as shit.

Fallout
I never played the video game, and the show is not in the league of The Last of Us (few are), but Fallout was good fun. Great set and costume design. A generous helping of Walter Goggins never hurts.

Dune 2
Denis Villeneuve doesn’t make bad movies, even when he splits one movie into two movies.

Dune: Prophecy
The series is better than I was expecting. It feels like early Game of Thrones in space: palace intrigue, backstabbing, no character safe from a violent death, etc.

Ricky Stanicky
Ok, let me be clear: this is a terrible movie. The funniest part may be watching the gymnastics the writers perform attempting to navigate the “men just want time away from their wives” trope without invoking all the patriarchal shit that comes with it. (Spoiler: of course they can’t; it’s baked into the trope.) But there’s a movie inside this movie I want to watch. John Cena’s character is a washed-up performer who throws himself into his role as Ricky Stanicky (a fictional person who must suddenly become real to keep a years-long lie intact) with his whole heart, even cold turkey-quitting booze on three days notice. In the right hands, this all becomes a wonderful “sad clown” movie starring Cena, whose gifts as an actor I think are underrated, attempting to better himself by performing friendship with three absolute dickheads who don’t appreciate him. I mean, even if you don’t think this bit is funny (and I do, unfortunately), you should still be able to watch Ricky Stanicky and come to the conclusion that Cena deserves a truly great role.

American Fiction
Terrible title. Good film, though not nearly as good as the book (Erasure by Percival Everett).

Best Kid Video

I highly recommend letting your five year old steal your phone.

Poems

I keep a Google doc diary of poems that, when I read them the first time, made me feel something. I make a new one every year so that the doc doesn’t get overwhelming, 2024’s has 59 poems. Some came from books I read; others arrived digitally from places like Poets.org’s Poem-a-day; others were posted by friends. Some are new, some are not so new. Here’s an abbreviated doc of my 18 favorites, kind of like a little chapbook, that you can check out, or not. I’ll never know.

But I also want to spotlight Adam, the debut collection from Gboyega Odubanjo, who died tragically at the age of 27 in 2023. Adam is an extended elegy for an unidentified boy found in the River Thames in 2001. When he was discovered, the boy’s body was only a torso, wearing an orange pair of shorts, a sad and horrifying image that Odubanjo returns to, over and over, teasing out its possible meaning and connecting the boy’s life to his own. I discovered Odubanjo’s work a few years ago because he wrote a lovely and original imitation of a César Vallejo poem I love. Through our mutual friend, Raymond Antrobus, I have heard what an incredible human he was. I wish I’d had the chance to meet him. I wish he were still with us.

Crown
Gboyega Odubanjo

head permed heavy because rain don’t dare touch us.
on certain mornings you can hear it deep in conversation
with itself. i can’t the rain says. for it is written that so long
as the oils of scorched earth red to the root and royal hold
the hair in place then it shall remain untouched. the world
must scab. the peacocks must shrivel into vultures
before the scalp is troubled. but it has been so long
the rain says since i have tasted. generations have come and
gone and still it holds. this immaculate empire without stray.

Songs

I always preface this section with: I am not to be trusted when it comes to music. Everything here was something someone else told me was good, and then I listened to it and gave it my silly thumbs up. For a real music critic’s year-end list, check out Hanif Abdurraqib’s 123 best albums of 2024.

[Japanese title I can’t write out] - Haroumi Hosono
Play this at my funeral. Loud.

Alesis + ROCKMAN - Mk.gee
Get your hair out of your face, bro.

Sympathy Is a Knife - Charli xcx
Had no idea she was British.

Haenim - Kim Jung Mi
I wish this song were a whole film. It might be.

Start Again - Kasey Anderson
My buddy Kasey came out with (maybe?) his last album. I love this little song toward the end. If you see him, tell him not making another album is a dumb idea.

West of Kendall - Silver Bluff Blues Band
My other buddy (I have two buddies, tops) Danny Gonzalez made this fun little EP of lounge surf rock. The name comes from a Miami neighborhood. Here’s the soundtrack, someone make the movie.

(Nice Dream) - Radiohead
Ok, fine, I’ll admit it. The Bends IS the best Radiohead album.

Things Behind Things Behind Things - Bon Iver
I pronounced his name “Bahn-Eye-Ver” for years.

Arrow Through Me - Wings
Paul’s music post-Beatles is better than music by The Beatles. [ducks]

Right Back To It - Waxahatchee w/ MJ Lenderman
More like Slaps-ahatchee amirite?

Self-Control - Laura Branigan
There’s a great cover of this banger in a terrible Miami Vice episode by a band called “The Glory Hole Drillers.”

Heads Carolina, Tails California - Jo Dee Messina
The Gen Z “Callin’ Baton Rouge”

Dennehy - Serengeti
The dorkiest possible thing I could do would be to drive around Chicago singing along to this song. Can you imagine that?

Good Luck, Babe! - Chappell Roan
Good luck getting me to skip this song!

Wrap-up

Always happy to hear your responses, and looking forward to seeing you in 2025.