About That Guardian List of 100 Best Novels
These lists are always absurd, but also instructive.
The Guardian has released a list of the “100 best novels published in English” (which makes room for translated literature such as One Hundred Years of Solitude [#18]) and how can I not talk about this?
First, I should note that this is a different project from the New York Times list of a couple of years ago some may recall, which was predicated on identifying “the 100 best books of the 21st century.”
About That NYTimes Best Books List
The New York Times’s multi-day feature on the “100 Best Books of the 21st Century” is obvious engagement farming that is clearly working - here I am writing about it - but I cannot yet decide if I am more interested or irritated by the exercise.
The Guardian is going all-time and also novels only. These sorts of exercises are inherently ridiculous - Because, come on, what does “best” mean anyway? - but the Times combining non-fiction and fiction under one umbrella struck me as inherently kinda dumb particularly in something that is presented as a ranked list.
Trying to articulate a reason why Sigrid Nunez’s The Friend (#68) is a superior book to Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow (#69) is not possible because it’s like trying to describe why an orange is better than a basketball.
At least the Guardian is sticking to a genre, though that “published in English” clause gives a pretty wide date range. I was taught in my grad school history of the novel class that Pamela; or Virtue Rewarded by Samuel Richardson (1740) was the first “English novel,” though some prefer Robinson Crusoe (1719) as the starting point for novels originally written in English.
Neither of those books make the list, but Don Quixote, published in two parts (1605 and 1615) and translated into English shortly after, does at number 26.
I do not want to mark myself as a cretin, but having read Don Quixote, while it is definitively one of the most important novels of all-time, I have a difficult time ranking it as one of the best in terms of a novel that one would read with sustained interest beyond duty. There are many classic novels that deliver great pleasure to contemporary audiences as novels, but DQ is not one of them.
As best I can tell without obsessively double-checking nine books make both lists:
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante #1 NYT, #51 Guardian
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel #3 NYT, #34 Guardian
The Known World by Edward P. Jones #4 NYT, #94 Guardian
Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald #8 NYT, #73 Guardian
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro #9 NYT, #59 Guardian
The Road by Cormac McCarthy #13 NYT, #98 Guardian
White Teeth by Zadie Smith #31 NYT, #63 Guardian
The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst #32 NYT, #87 Guardian
The Vegetarian by Han Kang #49 NYT, #85 Guardian
Reflecting on this concurrence my first thought is that The Road is hugely overrated. Good book, but middle of the pack for McCarthy’s own oeuvre. At least the Guardian has Blood Meridian (#68) on its list while only The Road makes the list on the Times.
The Guardian polled 172 “authors, critics, and academics” and then calculated a score based on frequency of mention and place of ranking in the individual lists. As methodologies go, this is no better or worse than any other, which is to say it’s entirely unscientific and not even worth arguing about.
Also, some of these novels are not novels. The Metamorphosis is like 60 pages long, a novella by any possible definition, but there it is at #48.
At least its inclusion gives me an excuse to share this all-time howler from Richard Dawkins.
(More recently Dawkins was seduced by his chatbot to the point that he’s ready to consider large language models conscious. They aren’t.)
This is the Guardian’s top 5:
Which, okay…fine, hard to argue over five books that loom over the entire firmament of English (and not English) literature. At least I assume so because I’ve never read To the Lighthouse or Middlemarch.
I know, horrors. I should turn in my professional book person card, but as previously established, the books go back to 1605, so let’s cut ourselves some slack if we haven’t gotten to everything yet. The Guardian provides a handy widget to check your own reading (see it on the right side of the page here), and I clocked in at what I believe to be a respectable 41 completed.
The Guardian also gives you a chance to fill out your own list, which I’m not going to do for them, but I am going to do for you here. I also am going to resist the temptation that many must give in to, which is to shape one’s list while considering how others may judge you for that list to avoid judgment and shame.
I am beyond shame.
Really, there’s nothing to be ashamed about when it comes to the books you think are best. Your taste is yours. Some of the books on my list are, for sure, not consequential, but if you asked me, yeah, they’re the best.
I compiled my list by perusing the books in my house and reacting with my gut as to whether or not I thought what I was looking at was one of the “best” books I’d ever read. That gave me a list of about 60 that I’ve whittled to 10. I’m not going to rank these because I don’t have the time it would take to figure things out to that degree. All those titles are clickable links for Bookshop.org listings for each book if you want more details.
Oreo by Fran Ross
The only novel by Ross, Oreo has become something of a cult favorite since be re-issued by New Directions. It’s a postmodern picaresque, and actually has a lot in common with Don Quixote. I just think this book is so original and funny and I love how clear it is only one person in the world could ever have written it.
Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
The Guardian list is extremely light on postmodern works, while mine is pretty heavy with them, which tells you something about my taste, and perhaps, how brief the heyday of the big postmodernists truly was. Gravity’s Rainbow delivered the best ratio of difficulty to satisfaction in my reading life. I deeply enjoyed the struggle. I rhapsodically waxed about GR in a previous newsletter.
Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor
This book chilled me to the bone with its fierce exploration of American religious fervor and I think of it any time I see Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon podium declaring that God is blessing America’s “warfighters.”
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
Nabokov’s biggest masterpiece and another major work of postmodern fiction that can be read like a puzzle but has many pleasures beyond the games Nabokov is playing. The first of my choices that is also on the Guardian list (#29).
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Beloved (#2 on the Guardian list) is considered Morrison’s masterpiece, but this is my personal favorite, which makes it the “best.” A lot of my feeling is wrapped up in this being the first Toni Morrison novel I read and experiencing that sensation of - Ooh, I haven’t read this before. Is it like drugs? Sort of. (#75 on the Guardian list.)
The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead
Unless I’m overlooking something, Whitehead is not represented on the Guardian list, which is a bit of a surprise. The Underground Railroad is probably the consensus “best,” but The Intuitionist, Whitehead’s more consciously postmodern debut, rocked me when I first read it and that sticks with me today. Previously I talked with Whitehead scholar Derek C. Maus about what it means to “understand” Colson Whitehead.
The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
Simply the greatest psychological suspense writer ever, and I’m including the indefinite future in that pronouncement. In theory, a book that relies on suspense for its plot shouldn’t be one you’ve re-read like five times, but that is how good Highsmith is. Also comes in at #84 on the Guardian list.
The Water Method Man by John Irving
The life story of Fred “Bogus” Trumper, a man born with a crooked urethra and a penchant for fucking up. There is a scene in this novel where Trumper tries to learn to ski that makes me cry with laughter. How can this not be one of my ten best? Another case where I’ve selected a novel other than the one considered the author’s most major work (The world According to Garp). Not sure what this says about me.
Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell
Told in a series of fragments moving through the life of wealthy, comfortable, Kansas City housewife India Bridge, this is just a perfectly rendered novel. It’s all in the details and has an end that manages to floor me every time, even though I know it’s coming. I’m actually a little surprised this didn’t show up on the Guardian list because it’s a favorite among writers, but maybe the UK skew had an effect.
The End of Vandalism by Tom Drury
Regular readers know that I recommend this book all the time. I recently called it one of the greatest midwestern novels of all time, but really, for me, it’s a a flat-out top 10 best. Another book where the details and atmosphere carry great weight while also being married to indelible, specifically drawn characters.
Would it be so horrible to share your own lists in the comments? I don’t think so.
Links
This week I review Alexandra Andrews’ follow up to Who Is Maud Dixon?, The Fine Art of Lying. I’ll have my own Q&A with Ms. Andrews up next week.
At Academic Freedom on the Line we published a guide to digital security for academics who may find themselves under outside attack.
At the New York Times, Tressie McMillan Cottom digs underneath the AI girlboss aesthetic (recently demonstrated by Reese Witherspoon and Mel Robbins). “One wonders if celebrity influencers hawking A.I. under the guise of feminism have even bothered to read the news.”
From a few weeks ago Andrew Ridker consider Roth and Wharton. An interesting juxtaposition.
Granta Magazine is looking for the next batch of most promising young American novelists. Hub City Press is looking for new books about the South.
This one from my friends McSweeney's and by Andy Orin, “I Cannot Throw Away USB Cables and It’s Becoming a Problem” hits a little close to home.
Recommendations
A very delayed Friday night flight back home after a very wonderful day with the good folks of Northern Virginia Community College has me several hours short of sleep and time, so no recommendations this week, I’m afraid, but if you’re looking for something to read, scroll back up. I am always open for recommendation requests, however.
Tell everyone else your list of ten best novels published English, if you dare.
See you next week. Imma going to take a nap.
JW
The Biblioracle
Well I have always enjoyed starting fights among my very dorky friends by bombastically claiming Middlemarch to be the best novel written in English, so I was overjoyed to see it top the Guardian’s list! I think it’s up there not because it is a preciously described, dull Narrative Of English Life but because it is, to put it simply, psychological and devastating. Worth the investment of your time.
Best novel lists always feel very Cosmo to me, even as I lobbied for A Fine Balance in the NYT best 21st century compilation.
I prefer the lateral, rhizomic pattern of books switching hands/downloads among friends - or bottom-column BTW nods to whatever’s on the bedside table.
Still. Some novels should form their own bookstore section labeled “Do Not Read Until After You’re 30. Perhaps Even 35 or 40.” Middlemarch and most of Dostoyevsky would sit among them - they only unfold fully for the reader with life experience and a feel for venality, vagaries of chance, dashed hopes, and the horizon of mortality in view.