Excerpts
“The 20th Century’s Greatest Hits: 100 English-Language Books of Fiction” by Larry McCaffery
Titles are below; you can read the list, complete with McCaffery’s brief thoughts on each, at LitLine (excerpting from American Book Review, Volume 20, Issue 6, September/October 1999).
1. Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov, 1962.
2. Ulysses, James Joyce, 1922.
3. Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon, 1973.
4. The Public Burning, Robert Coover, 1977.
5. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner, 1929.
6. Trilogy (Molloy [1953], Malone Dies [1956], The Unnamable [1957]), Samuel Beckett.
7. The Making of Americans, Gertrude Stein, 1925.
8. Nova Trilogy (The Soft Machine [1962], Nova Express [1964], The Ticket that Exploded, [1967]), William S. Burroughs.
9. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov, 1955.
10. Finnegans Wake, James Joyce, 1941.
11. Take It or Leave It, Raymond Federman, 1975.
12. Beloved, Toni Morrison, 1986.
13. Going Native, Stephen Wright, 1994.
14. Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry, 1949.
15. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf, 1927.
16. In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, William H. Gass, 1968.
17. JR, William Gaddis, 1975.
18. Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison, 1952.
19. Underworld, Don DeLillo, 1997.
20. The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway, 1926.
21. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce, 1916.
22. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925.
23. The Ambassadors, Henry James, 1903.
24. Women in Love, D.H. Lawrence, 1921.
25. 60 Stories, Donald Barthelme, 1981.
26. The Rifles, William T. Vollmann, 1993.
27. The Recognitions, William Gaddis, 1955.
28. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad, 1902.
29. Catch 22, Joseph Heller, 1961.
30. 1984, George Orwell, 1949.
31. Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neal Hurston, 1937.
32. Absalom, Absalom!, William Faulkner, 1936.
33. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany, 1975.
34. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck, 1939.
35. The Four Elements Tetrology (earth: The Stain [1984], fire: Entering Fire [1986], water: The Fountains of Neptune [1992], and air: The Jade Cabinet [1993]), Rikki Ducornet.
36. Cyberspace Trilogy (Neuromancer [1984], Count Zero [1986], Mona Lisa Overdrive [1988]), William Gibson.
37. Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller, 1934.
38. On the Road, Jack Kerouac, 1957.
39. Lookout Cartridge, Joseph McElroy, 1974.
40. Crash, J.G. Ballard, 1973.
41. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie, 1981.
42. The Sot-Weed Factor, John Barth, 1960.
43. Genoa, Paul Metcalf, 1965.
44. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, 1932.
45. A Passage to India, E.M. Forster, 1924.
46. Double or Nothing, Raymond Federman, 1972.
47. At Swim-Two-Birds, Flann O’Brien, 1951.
48. Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy, 1985.
49. The Cannibal, John Hawkes, 1949.
50. Native Son, Richard Wright, 1940.
51. The Day of the Locust, Nathanael West, 1939.
52. Nightwood, Djuna Barnes, 1936.
53. Housekeeping, Marilynn Robinson, 1981.
54. Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., 1969.
55. Libra, Don DeLillo, 1986.
56. Wise Blood, Flannery O’Conner, 1952.
57. Always Coming Home, Ursula K. LeGuin, 1985.
58. USA Trilogy (The 42nd Parallel [1930], 1919 [1932], and The Big Money [1936]), John Dos Passos.
59. The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing, 1962.
60. The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger, 1951.
61. Red Harvest, Dashiell Hammett, 1929.
62. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Raymond Carver, 1981.
63. Dubliners, James Joyce, 1915.
64. Cane, Jean Toomer, 1925.
65. The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton, 1905.
66. Ridley Walker, Russell Hoban, 1982.
67. Checkerboard Trilogy (Go in Beauty [1955], The Bronc People [1958], Portrait of the Artist with 26 Horses [1962]), William Eastlake.
68. The Franchiser, Stanley Elkin, 1976.
69. New York Trilogy (City of Glass [1985], Ghosts [1986], The Locked Room [1986]), Paul Auster.
70. Skinny Legs and All, Tom Robbins, 1986.
71. Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace, 1995.
72. The Age of Wire and String, Ben Marcus, 1996.
73. Tlooth, Harry Mathews, 1966.
74. Pricksongs and Descants, Robert Coover, 1969.
75. The Man in the High Castle, Phillip K. Dick, 1962.
76. American Psycho, Brett Easton Ellis, 1988.
77. The French Lieutenant’s Woman, John Fowles, 1969.
78. The Book of the New Sun Tetrology (The Shadow of the Torturer [1980], The Claw of the Conciliator [1981], The Sword of Lictor [1982], The Citadel of the Autarch [1982]), Gene Wolfe.
79. A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess, 1962.
80. Albany Trilogy (Legs [1976], Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game [1978], Ironweed [1983]), William Kennedy.
81. The Tunnel, William H. Gass, 1995.
82. Omensetter’s Luck, William H. Gass, 1966.
83. The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles, 1948.
84. Darconville’s Cat, Alexander Theroux, 1981.
85. Up, Ronald Sukenick, 1968.
86. Yellow Back Radio Broke Down, Ishamel Reed, 1969.
87. Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson, 1919.
88. You Bright and Risen Angels, William T. Vollmann, 1987.
89. The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer, 1948.
90. The Universal Baseball Association, J. Henry Waugh, Prop., Robert Coover, 1968.
91. Creamy and Delicious, Steve Katz, 1971.
92. Waiting for the Barbarians, J.M. Coetzee, 1980.
93. More than Human, Theodore Sturgeon, 1951.
94. Mulligan Stew, Gilbert Sorrentino, 1979.
95. Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe, 1929.
96. An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser, 1925.
97. Easy Travels to Other Planets, Ted Mooney, 1981.
98. Tours of the Black Clock, Steve Erickson, 1989.
99. In Memoriam to Identity, Kathy Acker, 1990.
100. Hogg, Samuel R. Delany, 1996.
the way a list like this always ends up seeming more like a checklist feels kind of dirty to me. maybe I only think that way because I’ve usually read so few of the books on them. maybe they’re supposed to feel that way.
i hear you, though i prefer to think “jumping-off point.”
12/100 slots are by women. Guess that’s better than 1/10! No Jane Bowles, no Elfriede Jelinek, no Patricia Highsmith, no Agatha Christie, …
I love Tlooth but no way is it better than Cigarettes. Also, no way is Mulligan Stew better than Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things. And speaking of “jumping-off points,” Mulligan Stew is about exactly the worst place to start reading Sorrentino. People often name it, and people are often wrong. While on the subject, Steve Katz’s Creamy and Delicious is wonderful, and you’d have to wrestle my copy away from me, but I’m going to go with SAW for his greatest book.
. . . The Man in the High Castle but not VALIS? With all due respect, methinks Mr.McCaffery’s taste is. . .somewhat questionable. Like, Raymond Federman’s Double of Nothing is an utter blast of a book (the original edition, mind you), but no way is it one of the “greatest hits” of the 20th century. Federman was fine, but he was no Céline. (Neither was Vonnegut.)
Also, bit of a stretch to call Beckett’s Trilogy “English-language.”
. . . No Wittgenstein’s Mistress? For shame! Also no Carl Barks comics, tsk tsk.
The problem with this list is that it’s . . . so . . . boring. Most of these books, no one needs to be told to read; I was assigned most of them in school. No Motorman (David Ohle)? No Nog (Rudy Wurlitzer)? No Bullet Park (John Cheever)? No Lucinella (Lore Segal)? No Three Blondes and Death (Yuriy Tarnawsky)? No Barry N. Malzberg? No Jack Vance? No Ann Quin? No B. S. Johnson? No Guy Davenport? No Hugh Kenner? No Cyril Connolly? No Gerald Murnane? No Gordon Lish? No Desmond Hogan? No Daniel Manus Pinkwater? No children’s lit whatsoever? . . . The secret subversive history of the 20th Century Novel continues to wait to be written.
. . . Three slots for Robert Coover? Really?
Well, my ongoing multilingual list http://jelimarco.tumblr.com/
is much lighter on American experimentalism/postmodernism but I’ve already posted Ann Quin, Jane Bowles, Jean Rhys, Patricia Highsmith, Angela Carter and Diana Wynne Jones, and will post at least Markson, Davenport, Paley and Brooke-Rose. Though, as I explain here http://jelimarco.tumblr.com/unfaq
it is a personal list rather than an attempt at canon and I’m not necessarily always choosing the best or more significative work for each author.
As a list that isn’t an attempt at canon, in which one isn’t necessarily choosing the best or most significant work for each author, how could anyone complain?
As a list of “The 20th Century’s Greatest Hits,” limited (here) to 100 slots (a traditional stopping point), the list looks extremely problematic.
Not to mention, a lot of the commentary is rather. . .debatable:
Um, that might be over- and/or mis-stating TIOLI‘s historical value just a tad. And while “poststructuralist novel” can probably mean anything under the sun: Rudy Wurlitzer, Nog, 1969, and David Ohle, Motorman, 1972—both pretty “crazed journeys to chaos and erasure.” (Also, uh, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas? Though I guess one could argue that isn’t a “road novel” per se.)
But what’s silliest about this list, frankly, is that you don’t need to tell people who read LitLine to read Raymond Federman. I know. I used to read LitLine. I found it by reading FC2 books, including Federman’s.
It would be like if someone here at HG made a list of the “the 17 novels of the 2000s capable of putting the best expression on your face and therefore arguably the best novels of this century so far which is still ongoing,” and 14 of them were published by Muumuu House. Hype =/= criticism, both now and then.
I’m sorry if I’m coming across as a dick, but it’s really all about context. TIOL is a wonderful book. It’s also not one of the most important—or even one of the most interesting—novels of the 20th Century, not when the century is being reduced to 100 slots. And I doubt the perspicacity of any critic who claims that it is, apologies. (I wouldn’t care if someone claimed it as their favorite book of the 20th C, because how could I? But this list and its commentary are making much more objective and universal claims that that.)
And finally, goddammit, it’s “Malcolm Lowry,” not “Malcolm Lowery.”
Well no list which purports to crystalize the objective (rather than subjective) best will ever be uncontroversial.
Granted, this one is stranger than most, but I kind of take it as a given that any list of this kind will simply expose the biases of the compiler – which in McCaffery’s case seem to veer towards a “classical” postmodernist lineage and 60s-70s science fiction. You’re right that his choices seem odd even in that light, though.
Reminds me of those “alternative Nobel” lists which arise from the desire to defenestrate Pearl S. Buck and put in Borges and Nabokov, and end up with Tolkien instead or Böll, Joyce Carol Oates instead of Montale, Tennessee Williams instead of Halldor Laxness and so forth.
Wait… Kenner published a novel?
Gosh, I wish I were caffeinated and in front of a computer (not a phone). The great thing about lists is that everyone can make their own. None can be “definitive” but I think this one’s worth examining (1999 is farther away than it seems). Also, Beckett’s translations of himself are original compositions in their own right, I think.
It’s a personal list–necessarily reflective of one perspective (at one moment) and not some consensus–, but, as Adam says, it seems presented as something less limited and ephemeral than ‘quick–my favorite books’.
I’m struck by the America-centricity. Sure, (we) Americans have written lots of “great” books, probably many that’ll be read for as long as English is a language of even academic reading.
But… that’s it for Conrad, and for Forster? Of the many writers whose lives have overlapped with, say, Rushdie’s: Penelope Fitzgerald? Jennifer Johnston? Trevor? (–and I’m neglecting those British and Irish prize-winners as glossy- (or controvery-) ready as Rushdie.) David Malouf or Patrick White?
I like the effort – maybe it was no effort! – to include sci fi, but, with Delany and Gibson (especially) taking places on the list, Bester’s The Stars My Destination deserves similar notice.
And there are other genres, especially (hard-boiled or procedure-dominated) crime/detective.
Yeah. The Counterfeiters. Well, it’s arguably fiction.
. . . OK, sure, you got me, it’s nonfiction. But read a bunch of Guy Davenport stories (e.g. his Kafka stories), then read The Counterfeiters, and you can pretend it’s fiction for at least an hour or two.
Beckett’s translations are original compositions but every translation is arguably an original composition. So Martin Chalmers’s marvelous translation of Elfriede Jelinek’s most brilliantest Women as Lovers should be on the list, no? (Especially since Lawrence’s Women in Love is here?)
I have no problem whatsoever with this list if it’s a personal list. How could anyone have any problem whatsoever with any personal list? I myself think that Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain Chronicles are five of the tenderest, most beautiful novels of the 20th century, and I adore them and wouldn’t want to imagine a universe without them.
And that said, while I may weep myself to sleep at the thought that there exist people who haven’t read The High King (which surely contains one of the greatest endings in any fantasy series ever, amirite?), I also don’t go around posting online that Alexander’s fantasy series is “the most unrivaled avant-modernist mash-up of the Mabinogion and post-WWII proto-hippie idealism, not to mention arguably the greatest novel possible by a frustrated non-violinist living in Philadelphia, being simultaneously also perhaps the brilliantest commentary yet perceived by a tall man on the sacrifices that youth must make to the claims of adulthood.”
You know what really rankles me about McCaffery’s list? His descriptions of the books are examples of really shitty writing. What does it it say when such great works of literature inspire such non-committal commentary? If Mr. McC— thinks that these 100 books are the Greatest Hits of the 20th century—stuff that later centuries should bow down and honor—then shouldn’t he be willing to sacrifice something for each and every one of them? And not crank out some half-assed description of each one?
While I’m on the subject, I have the same problem with each and every one of Chris Higgs’s lists (sorry, Chris, but it’s true). If you so love the work that you’re telling others to check out, then really fucking say something about it—don’t just link to some Amazon summary. (Fuck Amazon!)
Bleed for what you adore.
It seems to me that the list is a combination of Canonical Modernist Classics and Postmodernist American Stuff that was en vogue i the 1970s.
Being therefore a collection of Books that Larry McCaffery Really Likes.
Which is fine. But there’s your headline for the list (BtLMRL). Why pretend otherwise?
I mean, I totally get it. The 1970s were a scary time to be a lover of weird fiction. Steve Katz once told me all about it. In the 1960s, the major houses were still publishing some pretty crazy shit. They put out The Exagggerations of Peter Prince, fercrissake! But then the bean counters took over the presses and capitalism subsumed literary production (or at least its publishing aspect), and everyone who couldn’t sell thousands of copies got unceremoniously dropped. And for a while it looked as though there would be no home for any writer who couldn’t also sell, which is a terrifying prospect. (I mean, just tell me about it! My first book has sold like 100 copies! My second book has sold I think 5! 4 of which my parents bought!)
And so the culture desperately needed presses like the Fiction Collective and Dalkey—which triumphantly blazed the way for the uncountable small indie presses we have today. And everyone working in the indie-/alt-lit scene owes them a major debt. And I totally get that Larry McCaffery was calling attention to Raymond Federman at a time when practically no one knew who Raymond Federman was. And I honor him for that. I whiled away many a wonderful hour in the late 1990s reading Raymond Federman, thanks in no small part to critics like Larry McCaffery. And let me further state that it was not an unhappy day when I came across a used copy of The Metafictional Muse: The Work of Robert Coover, Donald Barthelme and William H. Gass!
But . . . perspective is perspective, and context is context. And while it may be sad that the masses never bought a million copies of Raymond Federman’s Aunt Rachel’s Fur (a book I helped lay out, btw & fwiw, when I worked at FC2), the fact remains that . . . Aunt Rachel’s Fur was a pretty mediocre novel, and Raymond Federman really wasn’t one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. I’m sorry, but he wasn’t! He was awesome in his own way, and I’m sure he’ll go down in history as a better writer than me—and God bless him for that! I was very sad when he died! And to this day I remain truly fond of Double or Nothing (the original edition), and think it a truly lovely book.
But Federman was also not as great a writer as Céline and to Beckett, whom he endlessly ripped off. It’s very sad, but it’s very true! If I were standing in the last remaining library on earth, and said library were on fire, and I could grab either a copy of the Trilogy or Double or Nothing, then I would grab the Trilogy, all apologies! And I would also try to find a way to stuff Death on the Installment Plan under my other arm! And Journey to the End of Night under my chin! But Double or Nothing and its jazzy protagonist, and its boxes and boxes of noodles—would burn unto a crispy little tinder!
And do you know what? I don’t think Mr. Federman would disagree with my decision. Because one of the things that’s so beautiful about his writing is watching him attempt to reconcile his love for Céline with Céline’s detestable Antisemitism.
But the way to get folks to read Federman, IMHonestestO, isn’t to lie to them, or to bully them, or to hype them into thinking that if they haven’t read something by Federman, they haven’t read The Greatest Novel of the 20th Century. It just simply isn’t. Instead, one can say something like:
“Double or Nothing, now that’s an unusual novel, because it draws heavily on typewriter art, not to mention also being written in the conditional. And lest that make it sound daunting and experimental, it’s consistently very fun, & funny, expressing an amazing exuberance of a Frenchman who miraculously survived the Holocaust, and who found himself in love with his adopted country, the US! What an utter blast of a book! (But read the original edition and not the reprint!)”
Just like Andre 3000—OHH OH, I’m just being honest . . .
Hehe, like 10 of these 16 comments are by me, and I just wrote like 3,000 words on this subject. But I also appreciate your sharing this list, Brooks, just I appreciate Mr. McCaffery for making it. And I love so many of the books on this list.
I just wish it were better, and that critics tried taking to heart the lesson of fearless literature, and were themselves less fearful. Not to mention more honest.
I remember really enjoying Malouf’s An Imaginary Life, when I read it 1800 years ago.
Hey, where’s Janet Frame? A State of Siege is awesome . . .
Glad to see ‘Cane’ by Toomer in there.
Have you ever read Halldor Laxness?
Hi Brooks. ‘Would say all translations are original compositions in their own way. Granted that Beckett is a monstrous thing in that department, as is Nabokov, meaning I get your point; also translating oneself places translation in a different realm: one has to sort of get out from her own head and sort of re-enter it from the outside, from the other entity built around the other language (you might think they are the same person, the person who speaks language A and the person who speaks language B, but they’re not -exactly- the same).
I’ve read Independent People and Under the Glacier
Janet Frame surely, and also Malouf, but the absence of Patrick White alone is enough to disqualify the entire enterprise in my eyes. Noone, I think, defends the list as such – my point was to disregard the shaky claims to objectivity and greatness and consider it simply as another personal, flawed response.
The all-Time 100 novels is no less controversial, and many of the same points could be made – few women, over-representation of some authors, glaring omissions, and so on.
The Time magazine list, I mean. But also Le Monde’s list or the World Library/Best Books of All Time list raise eyebrows.
Damn, lots of Vollmann.
Ha ha, okay but no but okay. Immersed as he was young and in a scholarly way in the then-late-middle-aged Moderns, it would surprise me to learn that Kenner had ever tried fiction or poetry beyond notebook spitballing. An autumnal scholar who delighted in physical as well as literary gadgetry.
I’d easily put The Pound Era on my 100-books list.
Fantasy, too — I’m still a big fan of the Taran of Caer Dallben books. A few years ago I gave a box of the five of them to a couple of nieces and re-read them quickly first, and they hold up very well. Was dreading the sad disenchantment that often accompanies re-visiting glories of youth — was the neighborhood really that small? is that movie really so clumsy and dishonest? — but Alexander writes, in the juvenile keys, cleverly and delightfully.
Earthsea, maybe Narnia… but leaving Tolkien off such a list hints at rage, ha ha.
Among the antipodeans and considering the tenor of the list, I’d expect The Man Who Loved Children. –and among our ‘friends’ to the north, Ondaatje.
It does seem a bit like not so much a list of books that deeply touched the reader, but rather, an attempt to tick boxes, like a survey syllabus with a couple of passions that couldn’t be left out.
Reminds me of (too?) many books on my to-read list.
Really? And you still think he’s obviously unworthy of a Nobel? I loved Independent People.
All translations are definitely original works, and maybe I’m privileging the status of the author too much. However, Samuel Beckett has more in common with Samuel Beckett than Martin Chalmers has with Elfriede Jelinek, for example. As in, the cultural backgrounds, memories, and years alive shared by the writer and translator are more in line. Beckett translates himself but also has the “authority” to “rewrite” himself, because well, who is going to object? Translation, editing, and composition essentially merge, etc.
I almost wish the title were different, in which case maybe the list could be discussed separately from the title and concomitant claim that it’s like “the best of all time or whatever”. but yeah, Martin Chalmers, though a great translator i’m sure, still sat at his desk with the original in front of him, written by Elfriede Jelinek. and surely Beckett translated himself with himself in front of him, but it’s his own work he is drawing from. and then again one might argue, ‘well the anglophone Beckett is a different person than the francophone Beckett’ but they are pretty similar though, really.
You misunderstood what I wrote. Tolkien for Böll, Oates for Montale and Williams for Laxness were improvements for those who compiled the Alt-Nobel lists, but they definitely aren’t for me. What I meant is that it seems easy to look at these lists and think “I could do better” but many who try end up committing very questionable decisions themselves.
“48. Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy, 1965.”
It actually was published in 1985. I’m glad it’s on the list — it’s the last novel I remember finishing that scared me.
Oh, yeah, I did misunderstand. Sorry.
I mean, I dare anyone to find sixty-four better English-language books of fiction written and published in the twentieth century. You can’t do it. It’s impossible. You might, if you tried very hard, be able to find sixty-two or sixty-three better English-language books of fiction written and published in the twentieth century; but not sixty-four of them.
And I appreciate your enthusiasm! The more I scrutinize this list, the OLDER it looks, as in a snapshot of a very particular time (Internet in its early days, less availability of books online, etc). Though it certainly has added to my to-read pile.
I am struck by the fact that so few are from female authors. Where is “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou? Where is “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee? I absolutely agree that Hurston’s “Watching God” has a place on this list, but where are other works of the same type, i.e. people of color and women?
Also, as a personal point, where are the fantasy and science fiction authors? Where are Heinlein, Harlan Ellison, J.R.R. Tolkien, Tad Williams, William Gibson, Anne McCaffery, Andre Norton, Marion Zimmer Bradley? These might by Mr. McCaffery’s 100 faves, but I wouldn’t say they’re the top 100 greatest of all time.
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