Sherry Chandler » An Alternative Book List
An Alternative Book List
By way of Ron Silliman, Book of the Day is compiling an alternative to the New York Times list of top novels of the last 25 years.
I have read none of the books on the recently released New York Times list of the ‘best works of American literature published in the last 25 years’. This makes me feel inadequate, so naturally I seek for alternative explanations that will place the blame squarely on the list, as opposed to on myself.
…
I nominate myself as the conductor of a similar survey among authorities of the blogosphere. I will be emailing prominent literary weblog owners and asking them to nominate “the single best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years.” Criteria for inclusion: you must have a blog that writes about books.
Or, since this is an inclusive era, you can add a comment or email me at mapletree spam @geocities.com. Identify yourself by your online screenname and ’site’ of residence and I will include your vote.
I’ll have to admit that I freeze up on this kind of stuff. I can’t even tell you my favorite flavor of ice cream (I love ‘em all), let alone the best book I’ve read in the last 25 years. Well, okay, the best book I’ve read that was written in the last 25 years. I do think The Things They Carried is an amazing book. And Lee Smith’s Fancy Strut. But the two works are as different as chocolate and tutti-frutti. John Gardner’s Grendel is a little too old (1971 on my paperback copy). Then there’s Mary Ann Taylor-Hall’s Come and Go, Molly Snow. For that matter, I was impressed by James Baker Hall’s Praeder’s Letters. Does a novel in verse count? And then there’s Richard Taylor’s Girty.
Still, I stand in awe of anybody who can review a different book every day. And I’m all in favor of an alternative list. So I think all of you in my readership who blog about books should support this interprise. I guess us poets qualify.
Silliman also points us to Playboy’s list of the 25 sexiest novels ever written, which I agree contains quite a bit of trash, though that isn’t the term he used. Or perhaps it takes a trash look at literature. I can’t say I think of Lolita as a sexy book. And the violence of Henry Miller’s sex tends to make me a little ill. So does William Burroughs for that matter, though I can see the literary value of that one. When I was in my twenties, I thought Lady Chatterly’s Lover was sexy – because I was supposed to, because it was dangerous and forbidden – but as I get older, it starts to look silly and selfish. (Read Shamash on women over 40.) Here is Silliman’s take:
We note that a list of the 25 sexiest novels ever written that includes not one by Kathy Acker does indeed deserve “shrieks of contempt and hoots of derision.” No Dodie Bellamy? No Dennis Cooper? No John Rechy or Hubert Selby, Jr.? No William Burroughs? No Samuel R. Delany? But to get instead Harold Robbins, Erica Jong, Grace Metalious, and Norman Mailer at his very worst? Heff must have worked on this list personally – it certainly has that octogenarian touch. How Weatherford & Matthews managed to make it onto this list is an utter mystery.
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4 Comments
1. Terry replies at 20th May 2006, 12:47 pm :
I’d have to nominate The Bathhouse by Farnoosh Moshiri, about a woman during the Iranian revolution.
2. sherry replies at 20th May 2006, 1:01 pm :
Thanks, Terry. I have noticed that so far, even Book A Day’s list is mostly mainstream and white male. We need to know about novels like this one.
3. sherry replies at 21st May 2006, 9:16 am :
The Color Purple and Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day, a reader writes to suggest. I haven’t read the latter but The Color Purple moved me more than Beloved. I would have mentioned it but I sometimes distrust my emotional reactions to books. I got deeply involved with Alice Walker’s characters.
The same reader points out to me that Fancy Strut is not Lee Smith’s most nuanced novel. And I agree. I would describe it as more rollicking than nuanced but I’ve always loved its gentle sendup of the world of baton twirling. Perhaps because I was always such a clutz. Some other Lee Smith titles I’m fond of: Fair and Tender Ladies, Black Mountain Breakdown, Family Linen.
4. MW replies at 23rd May 2006, 1:15 am :
I’m no good at picking favorites, either. Or even remembering everything I’ve read even over the last five years. But I’d definitely have to nominate Peter Beagle’s novel “Tamsin”, mostly for the language and for Beagle’s idea that not every character in a fantasy novel has to be someone who’s super human. I’d also nominate it for how well he pulled it off. It isn’t easy for a grown man, he was 60 when the books was published, to write from the perspective of a teenage girl, and so far as I’m any kind of a judge of these things, I thought he pulled it off quite well.
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