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Thursday, May 11, 2006
Best Fiction of the Last 25 Years
I have little to say beyond noting here for the record the good taste of those Jesus’ Son voters.
Perhaps we could discuss omissions and criteria. I think that Infinite Jest is the most glaring omission and that White Noise is a much better book than Underworld.
Comments
it’s a bit sad, the list, isn’t it? this is the whole thing, the best there is? And even with Infinite Jest… still… not the best quarter century for american lit.
I can think of lots of quarter-centuries it’s better than. How about 1800-1825?
Well, yeah, but could peoples even like read back then? When was English invented?
And it feels like all Roth and Delillo to me and then one-hit wonders. Not a big fan of the Roth, despite the fact that we’re paysans, nearly… And Delillo, well, we’ve had that discussion on here before, right?
If we were to host an Olympics of fiction-writing, the humble South Africans would put the US to shame.
Boy. I feel terribly profound tonight.
I can’t see the list without selling my soul and giving away the deeds of my house to the New York Times, or something. Is it somewhere else? I’d be intrigued to see it.
Adam, here’s a messy cut and paste - where it says “review” the nyt links to (presumably) notices from first publications:
* * ** * * * * *
Early this year, the Book Review’s editor, Sam Tanenhaus, sent out a short letter to a couple of hundred prominent writers, critics, editors and other literary sages, asking them to please identify “the single best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years.” [Read A. O. Scott’s essay. See a list of the judges.] Following are the results.
THE WINNER:
Beloved
Toni Morrison
(1987)
Review
THE RUNNERS-UP:
Underworld
Don DeLillo
(1997)
Review
Blood Meridian
Cormac McCarthy
(1985)
Review
Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels
John Updike
(1995)
Review: ‘Rabbit at Rest’
(1990)
Review: ‘Rabbit Is Rich’
(1981)
Review: ‘Rabbit Redux’
(1971)
Review: ‘Rabbit, Run’
(1960)
American Pastoral
Philip Roth
(1997)
Review
THE FOLLOWING BOOKS ALSO RECEIVED MULTIPLE VOTES:
A Confederacy of Dunces
John Kennedy Toole
(1980)
Review
Housekeeping
Marilynne Robinson
(1980)
(This book was not reviewed by The Times.)
Winter’s Tale
Mark Helprin
(1983)
Review
White Noise
Don DeLillo
(1985)
Review
The Counterlife
Philip Roth
(1986)
Review
Libra
Don DeLillo
(1988)
Review
Where I’m Calling From
Raymond Carver
(1988)
Review
The Things They Carried
Tim O’Brien
(1990)
Review
Mating
Norman Rush
(1991)
Review
Jesus’ Son
Denis Johnson
(1992)
Review
Operation Shylock
Philip Roth
(1993)
Review
Independence Day
Richard Ford
(1995)
Review
Sabbath’s Theater
Philip Roth
(1995)
Review
Border Trilogy
Cormac McCarthy
(1999)
Review: ‘Cities of the Plain’
(1998)
Review: ‘The Crossing’
(1994)
Review: ‘All the Pretty Horses’
(1992)
The Human Stain
Philip Roth
(2000)
Review
The Known World
Edward P. Jones
(2003)
Review
The Plot Against America
Philip Roth
(2004)
Review
Small digression: CR wrote
If we were to host an Olympics of fiction-writing, the humble South Africans would put the US to shame.
Coetzee took Australian citizenship this year - that makes him Australian, pretty definitively, but what does it mean in terms of classifying his novels now, CR? Just wondered what you thought.
I’m not sure if that’s precious or effete, CR.
Adam, you sound like you just came from Slashdot. It’s the most important non-business paper in the Anglo-speaking world. Make up demographic information or get on the bugmenot train.
To me, this says more about the continuing decline into triviality of the NYTBR than it does about anything else. I like Tanenhaus’s writing, but so far as I can tell he’s presiding over the latest stage in a long-term decline. It’s really depressing to look back a couple of decades and see that it used to actually be a pretty serious publication. Nowadays its fluffier and fluffier--and more and more of a pr machine.
Morris Dickstein was one of the judges.
Who would you have voted for, Sean, provided that you’d agree to the terms of such a plebeian discussion.
Note that it’s easy to create blog-safe NYT links that don’t require readers to register or use bugmenot.
Thanks, George. I have made the modifications, but the larger point re registration stands.
Jesus. After all these years, Philip Roth clearly owes these people a beautifully-crafted, funny, moving novel about the sexual prowess, financial savvy, and world-historic influence of American literary critics, printed up in a hundred hand-bound copies and handed around on the condition that none of them try to review it.
Everyone needs a good dose of n+1 after this: check out the cover article. It doesn’t help me much in the end, I must say, but the visceral pleasures of reading it are not to be understated.
Not that I’m trying to defend the NYT, but what exactly are the objections to the list? I’m hearing:
1. (Gross) overrepresentation of Roth
2. The wrong DeLillo book
3. Absence of “Infinite Jest”
And a general complaint about the NYTRB as a fluffy, PR machine. Am I to assume that’s referring to all the Roth?
Are the judges objectionable? If so, please explain. The list:
Kurt Andersen
Roger Angell
A. Manette Ansay
James Atlas
Russell Banks
John Banville
Julian Barnes
Andrea Barrett
Rick Bass
Ann Beattie
Madison Smartt Bell
Aimee Bender
Paul Berman
Sven Birkerts
Harold Bloom
Bill Buford
Ethan Canin
Philip Caputo
Michael Chabon
Susan Choi
Mark Costello
Michael Cunningham
Edwidge Danticat
Don DeLillo
Pete Dexter
Junot Diaz
Morris Dickstein
Andre Dubus III
Tony Earley
Richard Eder
Jennifer Egan
Dave Eggers
Lucy Ellmann
Nathan Englander
Louise Erdrich
Anne Fadiman
Henry Finder
Jonathan Safran Foer
Paula Fox
Nell Freudenberger
Carlos Fuentes
David Gates
Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Julia Glass
Nadine Gordimer
Mary Gordon
Robert Gottlieb
Philip Gourevitch
Elizabeth Graver
Andrew Sean Greer
Allan Gurganus
Jim Harrison
Kathryn Harrison
Alice Hoffman
A. M. Homes
Maureen Howard
John Irving
Ha Jin
Thom Jones
Heidi Julavits
Ward Just
Mary Karr
William Kennedy
Frank Kermode
Stephen King
Maxine Hong Kingston
Walter Kirn
Benjamin Kunkel
David Leavitt
Chang-Rae Lee
Brad Leithauser
Frank Lentricchia
John Leonard
Jonathan Lethem
Alan Lightman
David Lodge
Ralph Lombreglia
Phillip Lopate
Janet Malcolm
Thomas Mallon
Ben Marcus
Peter Matthiessen
Ian McEwan
David Means
Daphne Merkin
Stephen Metcalf
Rick Moody
Lorrie Moore
Geoffrey O’Brien
Chris Offutt
Stewart O’Nan
David Orr
Cynthia Ozick
Ann Patchett
Tom Perrotta
Richard Gid Powers
William Pritchard
Francine Prose
Terrence Rafferty
Marilynne Robinson
Roxana Robinson
Norman Rush
Richard Russo
George Saunders
Liesl Schillinger
Joanna Scott
Jim Shepard
Karen Shepard
David Shields
Gary Shteyngart
Lee Siegel
Curtis Sittenfeld
Jane Smiley
Wole Soyinka
Scott Spencer
William Styron
Studs Terkel
Deborah Treisman
Anne Tyler
Mario Vargas Llosa
William T. Vollmann
Edmund White
Tom Wolfe
Tobias Wolff
You can also get no-registration-required links from RSS readers like Bloglines. They use the blog-friendly links by default.
These are also good because most of the time they don’t expire like other NYT links.
The n+1 cover article is as interesting as it is dim and unnecessarily limited.
Some thoughts on the “best work of American fiction” list, or rather the companion essay “In Search of the Best” by A. O. Scott, excerpted and commented on briefly below (for links, see bottom):
“The three novels do what we seem to want novels to do, which is to blend private destinies with public events, an exercise that the postwar proliferation of media simultaneously makes more urgent and more difficult.”
Really? Or more urgent and easier? because we don’t have to wait a generation to gather so many of the facts, and stories, from, by now, around the globe.
“A big country demands big books…. The best works of fiction, according to our tally, appear to be those that successfully assume a burden of cultural importance. They attempt not just the exploration of particular imaginary people and places, but also the illumination of epochs, communities, of the nation itself. America is not only their setting, but also their subject.”
Really? That parochial? High quality global novels like Point of No Return (by the American international journalist, Andre Vltchek) would seem to have a leg up on novels that limit themselves to a national subject, rather than, by now, a global one. Novels of the global age can be found at Mainstay Press, and elsewhere of course. Maybe a few more of those will make the next list.
Other thoughts:
Some novelists and critics have commented on the necessary internationalization of American novels for over half a century. And a decade and a half ago, Maxine Hong Kingston commented in “The Novel’s Next Step,” Critical Fictions: The Politics of Imaginative Writing (Philomena Mariani, Ed.): “I’m going to give you a head start on the book that somebody ought to be working on. The hands of the clock are minutes away from nuclear midnight. And I am slow, each book taking me longer to write… So let me set down what has to be done, and maybe hurry creation, which is about two steps ahead of destruction…. All the writer has to do is make Wittman [hero of her novel, Tripmaster Monkey] grow up, and Huck Finn and Holden Caulfield will grow up. We need a sequel to adolescence—an idea of the humane beings that we may become. And the world will have a sequel…. The dream of the great American novel is past. We need to write the Global novel…. The danger is that the Global novel has to imitate chaos: loaded guns, bombs, leaking boats, broken-down civilizations, a hole in the sky, broken English, people who refuse connections with others…. How to stretch the novel to comprehend our times—no guarantees of inherent or eventual order—without having it fall apart? How to integrate the surreal, society, our psyches?”
Further thoughts at The Future of Imaginative Writing and Political Fiction Journal.
http://apragmaticpolicy.wordpress.com/2006/05/11/best-work-of-american-fiction/
From the end of A.O. Scott’s article:
Startling in part because it reveals that the baby boom, long ascendant in popular culture and increasingly so in politics and business, has not produced a great novel. The best writers born immediately after the war seem almost programmatically to disdain the grand, synthesizing ambitions of their elders (and also some of their juniors), trafficking in irony, diffidence and the cultivation of small quirks rather than large idiosyncrasies. Only two books whose authors were born just after the war received more than two votes: “Housekeeping,” by Marilynne Robinson, and “The Things They Carried,” by Tim O’Brien. These are brilliant books, but they are also careful, small and precise. They do not generalize; they document.
Interesting—he’s not quite talking about postmodernism, but he is talking about a generational shift away from big, civilizational novels. Novels don’t look as big as they might have in earlier eras—not because of the lack of talent, but because people are cutting the lens to a narrower focal point.
I don’t think it’s a plebian discussion. I think it’s silly, and a waste of everyone’s time and effort. (It’s amusing me to think of the roomful of interns who probably did all the clerical work. Another achievement for meritocracy.) What’s the motivation for the exercise? Maybe I’m too cynical, but I think in a word it’s marketing. (Whaddya bet the Times pumped publishers for advertising dollars on the competition? or that within a few months we’ll see paperback reissues of each of these books with a prominent banner delcaring each one a member of the Times Top 25?) And what will be the effect? a narrowed list of great books from a publication that is (if my impression is right) already reviewing fewer books with far less substance than it did in the past.
Is there any upside to the process? Do we know anything different than we knew before? Except maybe that eminent critics and novelists are as swayed by recent fashion as anyone else? If they had to do something along these lines, at least they might have dones something like the TLS year end favorite books issue--which encourages idiosyncracy and variety and the possibility of something neglected being brought to attention. This looks to me just like the worst of the winner-take-all popularity contest approach to writing.
The only useful criticism of a best-of list is a different best-of list.
The NYT list seems like just what you would expect to get from such a large committee: the usual “consensus” choices and maybe a couple of surprises.
As for the purpose of the list, I would think it’s fairly obvious: for those with limited time, these are the books you should read.
I think these lists only work when they half flatter the tastes of the NY Times readers and half introduce said readers to writers they haven’t heard of. They’re equally useless when 95% tediously familiar, as this one is, as when they’re 95% obscure. A balance must be struck, one in which more obscure works like Jesus’ Son make it. (Although, that’s by no means his best book. Fiskadoro takes that honor. It isn’t even close. But Fiskadoro wasn’t made into a movie.)
That said, all the usual under-representation complaints can and should be made about this list. That said, Beloved would top my list of The Most Overrated American Novels of the Past 25 Years. I thought Song of Solomon--which, coincidentally, I read for a seminar I took with Señor McCann a few years back--a far better book. But I know I’m in the minority on this one.
Your opinion about Fiskadoro, shared as it is by no one, would be less pointlessly contrarian if phrased as an invitation to read that mildly neglected work.
They’re equally useless when 95% tediously familiar, as this one is
Perhaps if the intended audience were English lit majors. But perhaps the intended audience is people who haven’t already read the books on the list.
I’m not sure how “Fiskadoro, his best book by a mile, here’s a link to it” doesn’t constitute an invitation. Also, previous to this conversation, everyone I know who’s read a lot of Johnson has been on the Fiskadoro boat. Granted, I haven’t read Seek, but I thought the consensus was that it’s easily the best of his novels. (This consensus was come to before Jesus’ Son was made into one of the best adaptations I’ve encountered, so I don’t think there’s any contrarianism at play here. Actually, it dates from the elitist battles which followed Time‘s review of Already Dead, thereby bringing an end to his hipness.)
blah, I suppose I don’t think these lists do any preaching to the converted, who’ve read the majority of the books on them. I could be wrong, however, since I’m just guessing about the general literacy of people who read the Times‘ Book Section.
Seek‘s not a novel.
You are the only person in the world, I’m certain, who, having read both Jesus’ Son and Fiskadoro, thinks the latter is better. Now if someone is convincingly able to testify otherwise on this thread, then that’s something, tainted though it’d be.
Jesus’ Son was made into one of the best adaptations I’ve encountered
Loved the novel, hated the movie.
We’re moving into Bakhtinian territory re “novel” here, folks. I just want you to be aware.
The movie was, what is it, teh suk? I wanted to like it.
Yes, it’s not. That sentence began “Granted, I haven’t read Seek,” then realizing I didn’t want you to go “Ah-ha! But you haven’t read all of his poetry!” I switched gears and specified his novels, all of which I’ve read. As for the Fiskadoro vs. Jesus’ Son deathmatch, I’m not sure anyone on this thread will answer to it, but fifteen years ago, on the front stoop of the late, lamented Caliban’s Books, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone saying otherwise.
I’m surprised that people didn’t like the movie. I expect people not to out of, what’s the word, the obligation to denigrate adaptations, but I thought it an amazing piece. The acting brilliantly brutal, captured the novel’s nuance, and even had the novel’s distinctive pace. I’m not sure what there is to complain about. That the whacked-out junkie male nurse was too whacked out, or is that Black chose Georgie, of all roles, as the one he’d chill and act a little in? All the Wilco?
I’ve never thought of Jesus’ Son as quite a novel, more as a hybrid of collection of short stories and novel.
I’ll back Scott up on Fiskadoro. I would like to follow up not by complaining about the branding of Roth, Updike, and DeLillo as great literature, but by pulling out my list of criminally underappreciated American novels published since 1980only I don’t have that list, because I’m pretty sure that America’s most noteworthy fiction is not getting published. That Times list can’t be held directly responsible, but it’s symptomatic. Meanwhile, with Peter Carey on board, Australia was already close to outclassing the U.S. even before Coetzee took citizenship. Certainly per capita.
The stupid Valve won’t let me login. Is it trying to tell me something?
I hadn’t realised quite so many people were asked for judgley opinions. Too many for judges but not enough for a popularity contest. That and the bit Amardeep quoted about Housekeeping and The Things They Carried being in the class of books which received more than two votes suggests that this shortlist is yet another instance of failure to understand the significance of the Long Tail. I bet there were lots of books that got one vote & didn’t appear on the list.
I agree with Sean that exercises like this are pointless, and signify an abdication of critical responsibility on the part of the publication.
signify an abdication of critical responsibility on the part of the publication.
Rather high-sounding words, but what do you believe to be the critical responsibility of the NYT and how was it abdicated in this instance?
Coetzee took Australian citizenship this year - that makes him Australian, pretty definitively, but what does it mean in terms of classifying his novels now, CR? Just wondered what you thought.
Oy. Shades of the old Eliot / Auden lend-lease issue. And if Coetzee’s South African, is William Gibson American? (Did he ever take Canadian citizenship? Donno. He’s only been there for like 40 years now...) Pattern Recognition was nicely done, I thought.
N+1, somewhere in the current issue, has Alice Munro as American. My wife saw it, not me, so don’t ask me for the pg. number. Imperialists.
I’m not sure if that’s precious or effete, CR.
Well, Christ, I try for both. I am both, right?
It’s kind of hilarious that Kurt Andersen leads off the list of authorities consulted, no? I sold his novel on amazon like a decade ago. I imagine it aged brilliantly, Turn of the Century. NYC in-crowd myopia.
It’s a silly, depressing exercise, all in all. Shades of the dorm room. And Sean’s right - a sign of the New York Times.
It seems to me too that the NYT list exercise is in many ways absurd and seriously deficient — does that need to be pointed out? Despite some accomplished works on the list, it fails to provide even a glancing overview of the vital works of contemporary American fiction, or even much insight into what might be more truly representative of or understood as “the best” — singly, let alone, variously, defined.
Considering “the best” might not be the most fruitful way to go, but if one wants to seriously consider standards of high excellence it might not be terrible if the exercise were thoughtfully constructed. So, “the best” according to some 100+ literary figures who know one particular literary figure, or viewed much more broadly, in ways both more representative and eccentric? And “the best” culturally? intellectually? emotionally? ethically? aesthetically? (defined how?), the best in effect? or in execution? or in conception? or...?
It may be that a “best” list exercise can’t be done in a way that does justice to the value of literature. Considering which novels or short fiction may be exceptionally vital, in many ways defined, seems more fruitful and appropriate. But even then one would want much fuller contextualization of the selected works and their relation to other valuable works that don’t measure greatly or at all on any such list.
Evidently, the NYT list is the result of an exercise (by connected establishment figures) with no serious thought to design and understanding. Though there are some strong works on the list, the exercise is in many ways an embarrassment, not least given its obvious limits coupled to its grandiose claim. Should people take it seriously, it seems to me that it would be destructive to literature and culture, as it fails to highlight much of the most valuable writing, let alone the diverse “best,” and a lot of the otherwise vital and lively work being produced.
You know, there seems to be some confusion in this discussion. The NYT did not ask their judges to come up with a list of the best American fiction.
Instead, they asked their judges “to please identify ‘the single best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years.’”
Most of the judges picked Toni Morrison’s Beloved as the single best work. Other judges picked other works as the single best.
No judge, however, came up with or consulted on any list.
Make that a second (or third) for Fiskadoro. The scenes from Vietnam are his best writing, but I do like Jesus’s Son as well.
And, um, not to give myself away as a raving fanboy here but how the hell do Foster Wallace and DeLillo get mentioned and not Pynchon? I mean, I like DeLillo and Wallace well enough, but even at their best they’re not even in the same league as Pynchon. Shit, Underworld is just warmed over Gravity’s Rainbow.
Why would anyone think Roger Mexico a Pynchon fanboy?
For the record, however, I think he just missed the time cut. GR‘s ‘73, isn’t it?
Ah you’re right Scott. My bad. But all these books feel a lot older don’t though? Were the Rabbit books really written in the last 25 years?
Two of ‘em were. And they were collected in ‘95, so maybe they’re all in only a technicality?
"You know, there seems to be some confusion in this discussion. The NYT did not ask their judges to come up with a list of the best American fiction.”
I don’t see much if any confusion. Most of the criticism here is directed toward the New York Times and its process, if it can be called that, not toward the judges. And so it is that the New York Times “came up with” the impoverished process and its equally impoverished result.
Notice, this is not a criticism of the judges, the judges’ selections, or the works on the list—that’s another discussion, barely touched on here, it seems to me. The main criticism here is of the NYT process and its resultant list.
A competent anthropologist, etc, would have a field day with it all. This process and list alone could easily serve as the provocative basis for a hefty and rather incisive and even scathing book in any number of disciplines and fields—including literary ones.
It is indeed striking how thin the list is. Just think of all the non-Americans writing in English: not only J. M. Coetzee but V. S. Naipaul, Michael Ondaatje, Kazuo Ishiguro, Banville, William Trevor, Alice Munro, Pat Barker, and Ben Okri, to name just a few.
There’s a likely enough explanation there, Matt.
First I went through in my head the glaring omissions: *Mason & Dixon*. Works by Vollman and Joanna Scott (’tho they were at least judges). Russell Banks. Paul Beatty. Barry Gifford.
Gifford really stuck in my brain. He writes about poor folk, religious folk, ethnic mongrels with no sense of “heritage” or “community” or “tradition.” His characters take Greyhound buses when they need to travel between Utah and New Orleans.
I realized then that I didn’t want to make an argument about the inclusion or exclusion of Gifford. Instead, I was suddenly struck by the most glaring omission from the list (and perhaps from the majority of contemporary American literature): real life.
I’m not talking “realism.” I’m talking subdivisions, trailer parks, talk shows, debt consolidation, service industry, Wal Mart, megachurches. Where are the novels about “the way we live now”? *Rabbit, Run* got close, but it’s a boring-ass novel. *Beloved* and *The Known World* feature some of the strongest formal and stylistic moments of recent American fiction, but neither really gets at how Americans—black or white—live today. And any novel featuring college professors by definition will ignore the ways in which the vast majority of Americans live. Where are the novels in which people actually worry about jobs, supporting their children, feeding themselves? Where are the novels about kids growing up in a subdivision? My anthology of “contemporary red-state fiction” will never work!
Luther, your sentiments contrast interestingly with the Batumann piece. The short form’s domestic realism is a tyranny to some.
It seems my thoughts were partly along the lines of Luther’s, in thinking about a list of vital fiction: Dorothy Allison’s great collection, Trash, with all the up against the odds characters. Octavia Butler’s novel of economic collapse and rebirth, Parable of the Sower. The struggles and affirmation of Louise Erdrich’s characters in Love Medicine and Tracks.... Etcetera and so on. And these are all innovative and accomplished works, and arguably the best at what they do in a variety of ways. Again the problem of the list is largely a result of the problem of the process. And of course I also thought of the culturally critical and politically vital fiction, in my opinion, and in the opinion of quite a few other thoughtful individuals not likely to be consulted by the New York Times, that we make available through Mainstay.
The short form does not inherently tack to domestic realism of course, though that may be what most choose to publish and/or write for any number of reasons, though I’m not familiar with the article referred to here so possibly I’m missing the point of it.
Seems an awful lot of negativity for a list cooked up by such a large group of judges, and such a reasonable metric for inclusion (’just pick your best’). I’m sorry to see that Riddley Walker just missed the time-cut as well (pub. 1980); it’s a magnificent achievement, on quite the other end of pretty much every aesthetic spectrum from Philip Roth except ‘quality’ abstractly defined. I give it this praise: I finished it and, weeping, immediately started to read it again.
Tel it, brother Wax! I forgot about Riddley Walker. Wow. I keep meaning to read his other work but something holds me back. Any hits or misses I should know about?
Since when is thoughtful criticism negativity? Also, that’s not a large group of judges; that’s a tiny and very constricted group of judges, through no fault of their own.
And the “metric for inclusion” is anything but “reasonable” since there was apparently little or no deliberation about what best might mean, in what sense, in what context, etc, let alone a deliberation of how a resultant listed or other expression of “best” might best be arrived at and conveyed....
Many thanks, Wax Banks, for the Riddley Walker recommendation. Never read it, but now I’ve got something to read when I’m criss-crossing the country next weekend. Looks incredible. Plus, reviewers have written some terrible poetry about it, which is the kind of unlearned enthusiasm I love. (Jospeh McElroy inspires similar outpourings.)
You know, this gives me a great idea for a new thread…
Hoban is a borderline case in terms of nationality-- he’s American by birth, but has spent the last 37 years in London, and I always think of him as a British novelist (as may some of the judges)... Well, and as the guy who wrote The Stone Doll of Sister Brute, which was a great childhood favorite of mine and is about as cuddly as Der Struwwelpeter.
See http://www.ocelotfactory.com/hoban/chlit.html. Does that give anyone else an unholy flashback? I’m glad he wrote a book called The Sorely Trying Day.
Any hits or misses I should know about?
I liked Turtle Diary a lot. He’s got a lot of novels out in the past 7-odd years that have, I think, gotten increasingly good reviews with time in the UK.
John Crowley has some interesting comments on this list at his blog.
all men except morrison?! big blowhard novels, what about Paula Fox?
all men except morrison?! delillo, mccarthy, big blowhard novels, what about Paula Fox? jesus’ son is beyond reproach and I loved beloved…
What would be more interesting than the results would be to know the criteria the judge used in making his or her decision. - I throw it out that readers of this post might be interested in “Is the Novel Dead?” or the John Updike Posts or “Infinite Jest” on http://www.gravierhouse.com. - Would also note that it seems strange that Beloved would get top honors, with no mention of either Song of Solomon or Tar Baby; were they written more than 25 years ago? Finally, interesting that Roth’s self-proclaimed “Great American Novel” is the only one not mentioned. :)