The Rest of the Best
As you may have heard -- unless you are, for example, living in a steamer trunk -- the New York Times Book Review recently polled 125 writers in order to determine "the best work of American fiction of the past twenty-five years." When the Times presented the results of its survey, only books receiving multiple votes were listed. Since we're book critics (and therefore not too hung up on numbers), it seemed to us that the difference between getting one vote and getting two was ... not much. So we set out to find the books that received a single nomination, thinking that readers might be interested in the complete list.
Thanks to the kind cooperation of many judges, as well as the deep inboxes of several of our Board members, here's the first installment of ... The Rest of the Best.*
- Wonder Boys, by Michael Chabon (nominated by: Edmund White)
- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon (nominated by: Andrew Sean Greer)
- Little, Big, by John Crowley (nominated by: David Orr)
- The Hours, by Michael Cunningham (nominated by: Roxana Robinson)
- Carpenter's Gothic, by William Gaddis (nominated by: Cynthia Ozick)
- The Cider House Rules, by John Irving (nominated by: John Irving)
- Ironweed, by William Kennedy (nominated by: anonymous)
- Collected Stories, by Grace Paley (nominated by: Rick Moody)
- On Glory's Course, by James Purdy (nominated by: Paula Fox)
- Collected Stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer (Library of America Edition edition - 3 volumes) (nominated by: Norman Rush)
- Aberration of Starlight, by Gilbert Sorrentino (nominated by: Geoffrey O'Brien)
- Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, by Anne Tyler (nominated by: anonymous)
- 60 Stories, by Donald Barthelme (nomination listed in NY Times Podcast)
- The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen (nomation listed in NY Times)
In addition to compiling this list, we've asked judges for commentary on why they chose they books they chose. Some chose to remain anonymous -- others didn't. Like John Irving:
"I voted for myself," Irving told us, "for "The Cider House Rules" -- suspecting that, otherwise, I might not receive a single vote. We all know presidents vote for themselves, and they do far more harm than writers do. I confess to being underwhelmed by most of the books (and authors) receiving multiple votes, with the notable exceptions of the four novels by John Updike, and the six by Philip Roth. Clearly the TBR should have admitted that it asked the wrong question; the most admired writers of the past 25 years are Updike and Roth, and it's no surprise to me that among all the writers receiving multiple votes, Updike and Roth have the most readers. In fact, I just wrote Roth a letter, in which I said that, if the poll in the TBR had been a fight, he would have won by a TKO in the first round."* We're still collecting information from several participants in the NYT survey. Over the coming days, we'll be updating this list -- as well as providing a steady stream of judge commentary. So stay tuned.
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posted by Critical Mass 12:40:00 AM
15 Comments:
You've got to love Irving's audacity.
Mapletree 7 over at Book of the Day should be posting her alternative list tomorrow or thereabouts. Will be interesting to see how yours compares with hers.
I'm thrilled to see Little, Big on the list--thanks David Orr.
It seems Michael Chabon competed against himself with one nomination for a couple of his votes, so neither made the list.
Well, and if Chabon had voted for himself, he'd have been on the NYTimes site instead of ours, because he would have made the 2-vote cut ...
Alisa, my pleasure. "Little, Big" has its defenders -- Harold Bloom, Michael Dirda -- and I thought at least one of them would join me in voting for it. But alas.
Because of this discussion, I'm aware of -- and soon to be reading -- Little, Big, which, it turns out, my employer publishes. The things you learn...
Bloom went with Blood Meridian, almost certainly. And Dirda didn't vote. Crowley didn't vote, either.
well, now at least we know which of Irving's novels he himself prefers. Maybe that should be an article all in itself: ask all the prominent novelists which of their novels they themselves would read again, if they could choose only one.
Some great books on both lists, but I'm really surprised Chabon didn't make it. I've been following his work since Mysteries of Pittsburgh and his novels are, without a doubt, some of the best writing to come out of America in the last quarter of a century.
Yet another supposed most-notable-writers-and-books list almost entirely composed of male writers. How shocking, how unusual, how unstereotypical!
For my money, the list is at best a snapshot of current tastes among a limited number of writers whose names appear to have been chosen by free association. The backstory that the NBCC bloggers have unearthed is worth hearing, so long as we don't deify said list or participants or methodology! The fact that John Irving voted for himself (and in predictable fashion, was happy to say so) fits the script.
By my count, about two-thirds of the respondents were male, which seems no surprise when you see the list of runners-up -- man, the testosterone level is something to behold! (Do men really make the best writers? If so, how come? Is it a matter of more consistent output or innate ability? My own list of important writers of the past quarter-century would include more women: Jayne Anne Phillips, Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Munro -- Canada is in America, right?) Toni Morrison's fine thinking and storytelling skills don't dismiss the other factors that put her at the top of the heap, which include how the issue of race continues to haunt us; how neatly her book fits into high school and college curriculums, esp. at places with predominantly white students; her Nobel Prize. Maybe I see these things through too political a filter, but that's what journalists do, and I guess it's easier to have this perspective when you're at as much distance from the NYTBR -- real and otherwise -- as I.
In addition to Chabon, it looks like we can add John Crowley (author of "Little, Big") to the list of "writers who could've made the NYTBR list if they weren't too modest to vote for themselves."
Cynthia Ozick chooses William Gaddis -- I love her for it!
"Cider House Rules?" You freak, John Irving, the best novel of the past 25 years is "A Prayer for Owen Meany".
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