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This summer, The New York Times (NYT) published list “100 Best Books of the 21st Century”, compiled from a survey of “hundreds” of novelists, non-fiction writers, academics, editors, journalists, literary critics, publishers, etc. (you can see the full list of the titles here since the original list is on the other side of the paywall). I am late to comment on this, but because I had to be absent from this site this summer, I thought I would do so now, since I also enjoyed reading takes on it over at The Book Stop and The Reader’s Room. I do understand all the drawbacks of such lists, and my point is not to put down any undoubtedly great books or authors featured on this list, but just comment (i.e. rant) on the list overall.
I am surprised how heavily anglocentric and best-sellers-inclined this list is, showcasing commercially successful, popular books over those that have true literary merit, and choosing trendy, “politically correct” titles over foreign language or small press ones. The list seems to follow the major awards’ trend, and it unduly favours narratives surrounding race, politics, poverty or queerness. Books on these topics are very important, of course, but just the focus on these topics should not mean that a book necessarily qualifies to be “the “best” in an objective sense over other titles with other themes. NYT’s list is definitely not the “Best Books of the 21st Century”, but a list of “The Most Popular (Largely) English-Language Literary Fiction Written in the Last 25 Years by Authors Largely Connected to NYT in Some Way” (as others noted, NYT list has a preference for authors who wrote for it or are/were members of NYT or New Yorker). Obviously, “popular” and “the best” are two completely different things (though many books are both).
- Books written in English = automatically better than the rest? Hardly, but NYT’s list thinks so. It lists three books by Jesmyn Ward alone, and has three books penned solely by George Saunders, while also featuring at least two books by each of the following authors: Zadie Smith, Philip Roth, Edward P. Jones, and Alice Munro. There are also books on this list by such authors as Ann Patchett, Marilynne Robinson, Torrey Peters, Lawrence Wright, Barbara Kingsolver, Percival Everett, Denis Johnson, Alan Hollinghurst, Rachel Cusk, Jeffrey Eugenides, Kate Atkinson, Claire Keegan, Emily St. John Mandel, Ben Lerner, Toni Morrison, Rachel Kushner, John Sullivan, Tayari Jones, David Mitchell, Richard Powers, Ali Smith, Sigrid Nunez, Helen Macdonald, Lucia Berlin, Justin Torres, and Helen DeWitt. All of them are either British, Irish, American or Canadian, and there are obviously many more English-language books on the list. So, Scroll, a digital publisher based in India, conveniently asks: “How much, and for how long, is America going to obsess over reading and dissecting itself? Why do reading lists emerging from the West claim authority on culture with such hyperbole? Is diversity in literature only worth mention if the story speaks of a Great War or unrest?”
- The very few foreign language titles that do appear on NYT’s list seem to be of a kind where one is basically “pinned against the wall” without the possibility of excluding them because of some author’s immense popularity in the West (Ferrante earned three! spots on the list) or some strong title popularity/awards’ buzz, for example, Kang’s The Vegetarian and Melchor’s Hurricane Season. What about the post-2000 works of authors José Saramago (Portugal) and Orhan Pamuk (Turkey)? Did these Nobel Laureates produce books that were worse than Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, which although published just two years ago, is already on the list of the “Best Books of This Century”? Certainly, time decides that – not some two years’ span of popularity. Saramago’s The Cave [2000] is not only one of the best books of the last 25 years – it is one of the best books of all time. NYT’s list contributors do not seem to read such authors, and their definition of “world literature” seems to be confined to the high intellectual world of Bolaño (nothing against Bolaño as such). In response, Scroll made their own list of more “nationally-diverse” books that includes works by such authors as César Aira and Damon Galgut. And, then, NYT does not even have any of Olga Tokarczuk’s works listed? Seriously? Min Jin Lee’s listed Pachinko was a good book, yes, but nowhere near Tokarczuk‘s brilliance, in my opinion.
- And, then, if NYT’s list is so determined to showcase the English prose talent (a great goal), where is Hanya Yanagihara or Susanna Clarke? Yanagihara’s command of the English language-narrative is one of the best I read from this century (together with Donna Tartt’s – who is included). Yanagihara’s A Little Life is very, very divisive, but, surely, a monumental achievement. And, Jonathan Strange‘s omission from this list must be the crime of this century. The NYT’s list does feature sci-fi and graphic novels, so could have included this literary masterpiece, albeit also a fantasy novel, by Susana Clarke, and one of the best books I have ever read, let alone published this century. The NYT list also does not include such authors as Margaret Atwood and Louise Erdrich, and I would personally put into the list The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt, and The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton.
- Turning to non-fiction, the NYT list largely focuses on the American social condition, so we have such books as Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed and Evicted by Matthew Desmond, and I would have loved to see there Susan Cain’s Quiet or David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon, or even Roberto Saviano’s Gomorrah and a title by Lindsey Fitzharris (The Butchering Art).
What are your thoughts on the NYT list? Do you like it, approve or disapprove of its choices? What fiction or non-fiction would you have liked to see on a similar list?
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