NYTimes: What Is the Best Work of American Fiction of the Last 25 yrs?

[onthebutton]

Link to NYTimes

Cliff Notes of article:

1st place: Toni Morrison, Beloved
Runners Up: Don Delillo, Underworld
Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
John Updike, Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels
Phillip Roth, American Pastoral


Of course, this makes me interested in reading some of these. Has anyone read them? Comments?

[pryor15]

i've read Underworld, it's quite good, just a bit longish at points

[Rduke55]

[ QUOTE ]
Link to NYTimes

Cliff Notes of article:

1st place: Toni Morrison, Beloved
Runners Up: Don Delillo, Underworld
Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
John Updike, Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels
Phillip Roth, American Pastoral


Of course, this makes me interested in reading some of these. Has anyone read them? Comments?

[/ QUOTE ]

I was just looking at this.

I thought "What kind of pretentious a-hole has this list as the top 25?"
I guess it's a couple hundred pretentious a-holes.

Or at least what you think are the most glaring omissions to the list and why.

[Rduke55]

Also, I don't think the Rabbit Angsrtom should be eligible since Rabbit Run and Rabbit Redux was written >25 years ago. (Rabbit is Rich barely makes the cut - Sept. 1981)

[Tony_P]

"1st place: Toni Morrison, Beloved"

how politically correct

[Rduke55]

Also six different Phillip Roth books got votes for best american novel of the past 25 years?

[Rduke55]

[ QUOTE ]
"1st place: Toni Morrison, Beloved"

how politically correct

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, considering the list of voters I think they are the types to vote for the most "important" book rather than the "best"

Also, I guess omissions may not be feasible. Wasn't the question "What's the best book..." rather than top whatever.

But still, I doubt many non-academics would pick Beloved.

[LittleOldLady]

[ QUOTE ]
Link to NYTimes

Cliff Notes of article:

1st place: Toni Morrison, Beloved
Runners Up: Don Delillo, Underworld
Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
John Updike, Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels
Phillip Roth, American Pastoral


Of course, this makes me interested in reading some of these. Has anyone read them? Comments?

[/ QUOTE ]

In general I think the list says something about the relatively impoverished state of American literary fiction in the last 25 years. As far as I am concerned Toni Morrison is unreadable. I am very partial to Updike's Rabbit books--they are set in my hometown and include many people and places I know. My personal favorite amongst the articles I have published is the one I did on the Rabbit books which appeared in Arizona Quarterly a good long while ago. However, the Rabbit books go way back beyond 25 years. When I was in college we would go out at night and do Rabbit tours visiting all the places mentioned in the novel (in imitation of Dublin Bloomsday tours). I also enjoyed Confederacy of Dunces which really puts its finger on life in New Orleans (the way it used to be).

[Dominic]

Underworld and Blood Meridian were both amazing...Beloved was okay.

[Wynton]

[ QUOTE ]

I thought "What kind of pretentious a-hole has this list as the top 25?"

[/ QUOTE ]

I have no idea why you think this list reflects people being pretentious. I think it merely reflects those books that are best known.

I'm curious what books you believe belong on the list.