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Sun 21 May, 2006 09:16 am
May 21, 2006
What Is the Best Work of American Fiction of the Last 25 Years?
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
Correction Appended
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
Correction: May 21, 2006
A listing on Page 16 of the Book Review today includes an incomplete name for an author and historian who was a judge in an informal survey to name the single best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years. He is Richard Gid Powers. (The novelist Richard Powers was not among the judges.)
NYTimes
Had a chance to reread some Malamud and Updike the other day (short stories). While I have always been a Malmud fan, I loved the Updike.
plainoldme wrote:Had a chance to reread some Malamud and Updike the other day (short stories). While I have always been a Malmud fan, I loved the Updike.
I met Updike once on a flight to NY. Charming man.
I like Malamud too.
What do you think of Joyce Carol Oates?
Some of the books on Mr. Miller's referenced list are, in my opinion, quite good. Beloved, the first book mentioned, is only on the list because of political correctness. It, in no way, matches the skill and story lines in almost every one of Philip Roth's or John Updike's books.
Indeed, Harold Bloom. one of America's foremost literary critics. does not list Morrison's "Beloved" in his grouping of the best US fiction of recent years but instead gives six entries to Philip Roth and four to Don DeLillo.
"Beloved" is a trite re-hash of the unexpressible pain of slavery. It has been done to death and is therefore, inadmissible as one of the best of the last twenty-five years.
And yet there it is.
Joe(wonders never cease)Nation
Mr. Nation- May I respectfully suggest that if you enjoy good reading( and I am sure that you do or you would not be posting on this site) that you reference what most critics have called the best book on "The Western Canon" in the USA. The learned critic, Mr. Harold Bloom is filled with erudite insights--One of which is( with regard to the incredible nonsense written by Alice Walker--"The correct test for the new canonicity is simple, clear and wonderfully conducive to social change; It MUST NOT AND CAN NOT BE REREAD, BECAUSE ITS CONTRIBUTION TO SOCIETAL PROGRESS IS ITS GENEROSITY IN OFFERING ITSELF UP FOR RAPID INGESTION AND D I S C A R D I N G."
The man can write!!!!
I've been told about BernardR and that he is the latest re-incarnation of Massagatto.
Bernard -- Many people think Harold Bloom is an insufferable stuffed shirt.
Miller -- I have a weakness for all those huge mid-20th C American Jewish male writers. I took Arnold Goldsmith's course on Jewish writers at Wayne State University too many years ago to admit to and I really came to love them.
I met Updike when my daughter's high school hosted some students from Wales. One of the teacher's is a neighbor of Updike's and she held a clambake at her house (the Welsh teenagers left their unfinished lobsters on their plates. The host parents followed in their wake, eating them!), followed by an evening with Updike, who sat in an easy chair and was easy with everyone.
As you can see, I was originally from Detroit. Joyce Oates then taught at the University of Detroit, where two close friends of mine were working on master's degrees in English.
My best friend once drove his Harley chopper into her classroom, looped once and exited.
There was a general warning in the Motor City: if you meet Oates at a party, watch what you say or you might end up in a story.
Frankly, I gave up on Oates when I hit a line that described the main character's auto trip: it was something about on the hill were " . . . white dots grazing that might be sheep." I tend to be a little too rational. My kids say I can not suspend my disbelief. I felt if you can not tell the dots are sheep, how can you tell they're grazing.
BTW, following the screed against black women writers, I recently had the opportunity to teach Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, which some male member of this forum ralled against, either earlier this year or late last year. Wow! I loved it when I read it when it was re-issued in the Lost American Novels series (along with something called The Professors Like Vodka which seems to have the good grace to lose itself again.) Re-reading it thirty years later, I could only admire it. Yes, the court room scene is flawed, but the characterizations, the use of dialog, the story itself was wonderful.
You may be right, on the other hand, you may not be. Alas, I am so far gone that I actually believe the blurbs on the books I buy. The "Western Canon" flyleaf states that Harold Bloom is Sterling Professor of Humanities atYale University and Berg of English at New York University. He is the author of twenty books and the editor of many more. Bloom is a MacArthur Prise Fellow, a Past Charles Eliot Norton Professor at Havard and a member of the American Academy.
I have not read that he is a stuffed shirt but I will be glad to read the comments of any reliable critic on that score.
OK, you made your point, Bernard, there's no need to repeat yourself. You admire Bloom. Fine.
Re the survey: Both Roth and DeLillo had mulitiple titles that received votes, which skews the results, IMHO. Still, Morrison won, given the rules of the game.
Anything that inspires discussion of fiction is good in my book!
Hi, Dart to the HEart!
Long time, no read.
I personally have never heard Bloom called anything but a stuffed shirt and that was the mildest epithet thrown at him!
As for Beloved having been about a subject that has done over and over, gee, we should stop reading All Quiet on the Western Front and The Things They Carried and Bruce Catton and Catch-22 because war has been done to death.
And let's turn our backs on Ethan Frome because books about people who marry for the wrong reason have been done to death.
And forget Romeo and Juliet! Youthful rebellion has been done ad nauseum!
Of course, but Morrison is large touted because of "political correctness" She is no more than a third rank writer.
She is of the same stripe as Maya Angelou who was chosen to write President Clinton's inagural poem. Professor Bloom wrote:
"Angelou's poem was praised in a New York Times editorial as a work of Whitmanian magnitude and . indeed, its sincereity is indeed overwhelming. Professor Bloom reminds us of Oscar Wilde's dictum( Wilde was seldom wrong in matters of art that "all bad poetry is sincere."
The same goes for Ms. Morrison's tedious cry about the monstrosities involved in slavery. That has been done to death!!!but it is accpeted by the guilty in American society as gospel.
Those who take the time to read a book like Genovese's Roll, Jordan, Roll know that Morrison's book should not be on the Fiction shelves but rather on the Science-Fiction shelves.
BernardR wrote:Some of the books on Mr. Miller's referenced list are, in my opinion, quite good. Beloved, the first book mentioned, is only on the list because of political correctness. It, in no way, matches the skill and story lines in almost every one of Philip Roth's or John Updike's books.
Indeed, Harold Bloom. one of America's foremost literary critics. does not list Morrison's "Beloved" in his grouping of the best US fiction of recent years but instead gives six entries to Philip Roth and four to Don DeLillo.
"Beloved" is a trite re-hash of the unexpressible pain of slavery. It has been done to death and is therefore, inadmissible as one of the best of the last twenty-five years.
I take it that you''ve read 'Beloved'? And Maya Angelou? (seeing your last post.)
Yes, I have and found them to be much inferior to Native Son by Richard Wright and the Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. Those are, in my opinion books that are "true" and devoid of the weepy and hysterical tone in Morrison;s "Beloved".
And as for Angelou, Professor Bloom disposed of her neatly with his quote from Oscar Wilde about "sincerity".
I am sorely afraid Possum Gatos that your omission of one of modern americas greatest works of fiction leaves me no alternative than to dismiss your judgement of literature entirely. The work I refer to is Elephant Bangs Train by William Kotzwinkle. Perhaps if you had secured a better education you might not have missed out on the finer works of fiction available to the reading public.
Oh, we couldn't possibly reference him. He left----with ET.
BernardR wrote:Of course, but Morrison is large touted because of "political correctness" She is no more than a third rank writer.
And, this is the general opinion of most intellectuals on the East coast. :wink:
I did not know that Mr. Miller. Thank you for your information. Do you know why they have such a poor opinion of Ms. Morrison? I know the movie was a failure but I think that the irremediable physical ugliness of Oprah Winfrey was a big part of the problem.
Could it be, Mr.Miller, that the American people are reacting to the continual drumbeat about Slavery over and over and over and over by rejecting the repeated playing of the race card in movies, books, etc.?
Many Americans have admitted their guilt concerning slavery. Some see no connections between their own lives and the slavery which ended formally nearly a century and a half ago. I understand that movies that touch on Germany's role in the Holocaust are not very popular in that country.
I am very much afraid, however, that we will continue to get more and more writings from people like Ms. Morrison since that theme appears to be central to thier lives.
Morrison is still inferior to Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison. Both of them are much better writers than she is.
Sounds like you have some real issues with Black females...
waiting for you to confess that you ARE a Black female...
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